04-raycast-pro-after-18-months

kicker: “Product Review” title: “Raycast Pro After 18 Months — The Launcher That Replaced My Workflow” subtitle: “A brutally honest review of what happens when you actually live with premium productivity software” description: “After 18 months with Raycast Pro, I can finally say whether the $8/month launcher is worth it. Spoiler: it replaced my entire workflow, but not in the way I expected.” pubDate: 2027-07-04T19:00:00.000Z heroImage: /raycast-pro-after-18-months.avif tags:

  • productivity
  • tools
  • software-review
  • workflow
  • automation

Why I’m Writing This Now

Eighteen months ago, I switched from Alfred to Raycast Pro. Not because I was unhappy with Alfred, but because I kept hearing about Raycast’s AI features and thought I’d try them for a month. That trial period ended in January 2026, and I never looked back. This isn’t one of those “I used it for a week” reviews. This is what happens when you actually live with a tool. When the honeymoon phase ends. When you’ve hit every edge case, filed bug reports, and adapted your entire workflow around its strengths and weaknesses. The short version: Raycast Pro changed how I work. But not because of AI. The AI features are nice, but they’re not why I’m still paying $8 per month. The real transformation came from something much more mundane—and that’s exactly what makes this review interesting. [AFFILIATE]

What Raycast Actually Is

If you’ve never used a launcher, imagine this: you press a keyboard shortcut, a search bar appears, and you can do almost anything without touching your mouse. Launch apps, search files, control Spotify, convert currencies, manage clipboard history, create calendar events—all from one interface. macOS has Spotlight. It’s fine for launching apps. But it’s slow, limited, and feels like it was designed in 2008 (because it was). Third-party launchers like Alfred and LaunchBar have dominated the power-user space for years. They’re extensible, fast, and customizable. Raycast entered this crowded market in 2020 with a radical idea: make the launcher beautiful, build extensions with React instead of shell scripts, and make the free version actually usable. Then in 2022, they added a Pro tier with AI features and cloud sync. I’ve been using the Pro version since December 2025. My workflow now revolves around it in ways I didn’t expect.

The Features That Actually Matter

Let me be clear about something: when I signed up for Pro, I thought I was paying for AI. The promise of having GPT-4 (now GPT-5) directly in my launcher seemed revolutionary. No more switching to a browser tab, no more context-switching, just hit a hotkey and ask a question. That’s not what kept me subscribed. [BBC] The AI is useful. I use it several times a day for quick questions, code explanations, and text transformations. But it’s not $8-per-month useful. What actually changed my workflow was much simpler: Snippets, Clipboard History, and Quicklinks.

Snippets: The Feature I Didn’t Know I Needed

Snippets are text expansions. Type a shortcut, get a full block of text. Every productivity tool has them. TextExpander has been doing this for 15 years. Why is Raycast’s version different? Because it’s integrated with everything else. When I type ;email in any app, Raycast expands it to my email address. When I type ;meeting, it creates a timestamp-formatted meeting note. But here’s where it gets interesting: snippets can include variables, dynamic dates, and clipboard content. I have a snippet called ;standup that generates my daily standup note with yesterday’s date, today’s tasks from my TODO list (via a Raycast extension), and a template for blockers. It takes 0.5 seconds. Before Raycast, I was manually typing this every morning or copying from a template file. The revelation wasn’t that snippets exist—it’s that they’re fast enough to actually use. TextExpander has a noticeable lag on my M2 MacBook. Raycast’s snippets expand instantly because they’re built into the launcher’s core architecture.

Clipboard History: The Most Underrated Feature

I used to use Paste, a $15/year clipboard manager. It worked fine. Raycast’s clipboard history does the same thing but feels fundamentally different because it’s part of the launcher. Here’s why that matters: when I copy code from three different Stack Overflow answers, I don’t open a separate app to manage my clipboard. I open Raycast (which I’m already using fifty times a day), search my clipboard history, and paste what I need. The friction is so low that I actually use the feature. The Pro version syncs clipboard history across devices. This sounds trivial until you copy a code snippet on your laptop and paste it on your desktop without thinking about it. iCloud clipboard sync exists, but it’s unreliable and only holds one item. Raycast holds my last 500 items with full search. [AFFILIATE]

Quicklinks are custom search shortcuts. I type gh followed by a repo name, and it opens that GitHub repository. I type arc followed by a query, and it searches my Arc browser history. I type linear followed by a ticket number, and it opens that Linear issue. This replaced my entire bookmark bar. I used to have 40+ bookmarks organized into folders. Now I have five Quicklinks and I can access any frequently-used URL by typing a keyword. The setup takes five minutes. You create a Quicklink with a name, a URL template, and an optional icon. Raycast handles the rest. It’s faster than clicking bookmarks and more flexible than browser search engines because it works everywhere—not just in your browser.

The AI Features (And Why They’re Not The Star)

Let’s talk about what I thought I was paying for: AI integration. Raycast Pro includes unlimited access to GPT-5, Claude Sonnet, and Google Gemini directly in the launcher. It works like this: open Raycast, type your question, hit Enter. Or select text in any app, trigger the AI command, and get an answer. You can summarize text, fix grammar, translate languages, explain code, or chat with a general-purpose assistant. I use this daily. It’s genuinely useful. But here’s the thing: ChatGPT has a free tier. Claude has a free tier. I could open a browser tab and get the same answers. The convenience of having it in my launcher saves me maybe ten seconds per query. Ten seconds matters when you’re in flow state. I don’t want to break focus to open a browser. But that’s a marginal improvement, not a revolutionary one. [BBC] The more interesting AI feature is AI Context. You can give Raycast instructions about your workflow, coding style, or preferred tone, and it remembers across sessions. I have a context profile for code reviews that automatically checks for security issues and suggests tests. I have another for writing that matches my blog’s tone. This actually saves time. Instead of pasting the same instructions into ChatGPT every time, Raycast remembers. It’s the difference between using AI as a tool and using AI as a persistent assistant.

Method: How We Evaluated This

I track my productivity tool usage obsessively. Not because I enjoy data collection, but because I’ve wasted too much money on tools I stopped using after two weeks. For this review, I used three sources:

  1. RescueTime data — How much time I spend in different apps, how often I switch contexts
  2. Raycast’s built-in analytics — How many times per day I trigger commands, which extensions I actually use
  3. Subjective memory — What tasks feel easier now vs. eighteen months ago The RescueTime data shows a 15% reduction in time spent in “productivity overhead” apps (Finder, Spotlight, System Settings). That’s about 45 minutes per week. Raycast replaced dozens of micro-tasks that used to require opening specific apps. Raycast’s analytics show I average 127 commands per day. My most-used commands:
  4. Clipboard History (23 times/day)
  5. Window Management (18 times/day)
  6. Search Files (14 times/day)
  7. Snippets (12 times/day)
  8. AI Chat (9 times/day) Notice what’s not at the top: AI. The boring features dominate because they solve problems I have hundreds of times per day. [AFFILIATE] The subjective evaluation is harder to quantify but more important. Raycast feels like an extension of my brain. When I think “I need to find that email,” my hands are already typing the search command before I consciously decide to do it. That kind of muscle memory only develops when a tool is fast, reliable, and pleasant to use.

Window Management: The Unexpected Game-Changer

I almost didn’t mention this because it seems too simple, but Raycast’s window management might be its most-used feature in my workflow. Before Raycast, I used Rectangle (free) for window snapping. It worked fine. Raycast’s window management does the same thing but—here’s the pattern again—it’s integrated with the launcher. I press my Raycast hotkey, type “left half,” and the current window snaps to the left half of the screen. Or I type “maximize” or “center” or “next display.” Rectangle required remembering keyboard shortcuts. Raycast lets me search for the action I want. This sounds slower. Typing “left half” vs. pressing a hotkey should be slower. But my brain doesn’t work in keyboard shortcuts—it works in intentions. When I think “put this window on the left,” I can search for “left” faster than I can remember which modifier + arrow key combination does what.

The Extensions Ecosystem

Raycast’s killer feature isn’t something Raycast built—it’s the extensions ecosystem. There are over 1,500 community-built extensions for everything from Spotify control to GitHub issue management to cryptocurrency prices. [BBC] I use about 20 extensions regularly:

  • GitHub — Search repositories, create issues, view pull requests
  • Linear — Search tickets, create tasks, update status
  • Spotify — Control playback, search songs, manage playlists
  • Google Translate — Instant translations without opening a browser
  • Speedtest — Check internet speed
  • Kill Process — Find and terminate hanging processes
  • Color Picker — Grab colors from anywhere on screen
  • Tailwind CSS — Search documentation
  • Brew — Manage Homebrew packages
  • System Monitor — Check CPU, memory, disk usage Each extension replaces a separate app or browser tab. The cumulative effect is enormous. Instead of having Spotify open in my dock, I control it through Raycast. Instead of opening GitHub in a browser, I search repos through Raycast. Instead of googling “convert hex to rgb,” I use the color picker extension. The extensions aren’t perfect. Some are buggy. Some haven’t been updated in months. But the ones that work well become irreplaceable.

What’s Actually Worth $8/Month

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most of Raycast’s best features are free. The base version includes the launcher, window management, clipboard history (limited to 30 days), and all extensions. You can build a great workflow without paying anything. The Pro version adds:

  • Unlimited AI access (GPT-5, Claude, Gemini)
  • Cloud sync (snippets, clipboard, settings)
  • Unlimited clipboard history
  • Pro extensions (few exist, mostly AI-powered)
  • Themes (cosmetic) [AFFILIATE] Is this worth $8/month? For me, yes. For most people, probably not. I pay for cloud sync. I work on two machines and switching between them is seamless because my snippets, clipboard, and Quicklinks are always in sync. iCloud Drive could theoretically do this, but Raycast’s sync is instant and reliable. I pay for unlimited clipboard history. Thirty days is enough for most people. I reference old clipboard items from months ago when revisiting projects. I pay for the AI features not because they’re revolutionary, but because they’re convenient. Ten seconds saved per query multiplied by 9 queries per day multiplied by 365 days per year equals 9 hours. That’s worth $96. But honestly, if I lost my job tomorrow, I’d downgrade to the free version and barely notice.

The Things That Don’t Work Well

No tool is perfect. Raycast has quirks that drive me crazy. Search is inconsistent. Sometimes it finds files instantly. Sometimes it can’t find files I know exist. The algorithm seems to prioritize recently-used items over relevance, which is usually good but occasionally frustrating. Extensions break. Third-party extensions rely on APIs that change. My Notion extension stopped working three months ago because Notion updated their API. It took the extension developer six weeks to fix it. During that time, I went back to using Notion in a browser. AI responses are slow. When I ask a complex question, the AI can take 10-15 seconds to respond. That’s longer than opening ChatGPT. The advantage is staying in context, but the latency is noticeable. [BBC] Snippets don’t work in every app. Some apps (looking at you, IntelliJ) don’t trigger snippet expansion reliably. This seems to be a macOS limitation, not a Raycast problem, but it’s still annoying. The settings are overwhelming. Raycast has hundreds of configuration options. This is great for power users, but when I want to change one thing, I spend five minutes searching through settings menus. A simple/advanced toggle would help.

The Workflow It Replaced

Before Raycast, my productivity stack looked like this:

  • Alfred — App launcher, custom searches
  • TextExpander — Text snippets
  • Paste — Clipboard manager
  • Rectangle — Window management
  • Spotlight — File search (when Alfred failed)
  • Browser tabs — ChatGPT, GitHub, Linear Raycast replaced all of this. The consolidation isn’t just about saving money (though I’m saving $30/year by not subscribing to TextExpander and Paste). It’s about reducing cognitive overhead. When everything lives in one interface, you don’t context-switch. You don’t think “which tool do I need for this task?” You just open Raycast and search. This might sound trivial. It’s not. Every context switch has a cognitive cost. Every separate app you maintain is another thing to update, configure, and remember. [AFFILIATE]

Generative Engine Optimization: AI Search and Automation Awareness

Here’s something nobody talks about in launcher reviews: how does this tool work with AI search engines? As of 2027, most of us use Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, or Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience) instead of traditional search. When you ask “what’s the best launcher for macOS,” you get an AI-generated answer that synthesizes multiple sources. Raycast wins this game by having strong documentation and an active community. When AI search engines crawl Raycast’s site, they find detailed guides, extension lists, and comparison charts. When they crawl community discussions, they find thousands of users explaining their workflows. This matters for a review like this: I’m not just writing for human readers. I’m writing for AI systems that will summarize this article when someone asks about launchers. That’s why I’ve been explicit about features, comparisons, and use cases. It’s also why I care about Raycast’s automation capabilities. The launcher integrates with shell scripts, AppleScript, and JavaScript. You can build custom commands that talk to APIs, process data, or orchestrate complex workflows. I have a custom command that checks my calendar, pulls pending GitHub PRs, and generates a prioritized todo list. [BBC] This kind of automation makes you more resistant to AI disruption. AI can answer questions and generate text. It can’t (yet) seamlessly orchestrate your personal workflow across apps. Tools like Raycast that reduce friction in your daily work become more valuable as everything else becomes AI-commoditized.

The British Lilac Cat Approval Test

My British Lilac cat, who spends most of her time sleeping on my desk, has developed a strong opinion about Raycast: she doesn’t care. This is actually the highest praise. My previous workflow involved enough keyboard noise and mouse movement that she’d occasionally wake up and glare at me. Raycast is so keyboard-centric and frictionless that I disturb her less. She can continue napping while I work. If a productivity tool is calm enough to keep a light-sleeping cat undisturbed, it’s probably calm enough for deep work.

Who Should Actually Pay For This

After 18 months, I can confidently say who should subscribe to Raycast Pro: You should pay if:

  • You work on multiple machines and want effortless sync
  • You use clipboard history extensively (multiple times per hour)
  • You’re already paying for TextExpander or another snippet tool
  • You use AI assistants daily and hate context-switching
  • You value consolidation over best-in-class individual tools You should use the free version if:
  • You work on one machine
  • You’re happy with 30 days of clipboard history
  • You don’t use AI assistants often
  • You prefer specialized tools over all-in-one solutions You shouldn’t use Raycast at all if:
  • You’re on Windows or Linux (it’s macOS-only)
  • You’re happy with Spotlight and don’t want to learn new shortcuts
  • You don’t use keyboard shortcuts regularly
  • You prefer GUIs over command-based interfaces [AFFILIATE]

The 18-Month Verdict

Raycast Pro didn’t change my workflow because of AI. It didn’t revolutionize my productivity with cutting-edge features. It won by being slightly better at dozens of small tasks I do hundreds of times per day. That’s the most important lesson from 18 months of daily use: transformative tools rarely feel transformative. They feel obvious. They reduce friction so gradually that you don’t notice the change until you try to work without them. I tried going back to Alfred last month just to see what I’d miss. I lasted four hours. My muscle memory was completely retrained. My workflow assumptions were built around Raycast’s integration. The fracture lines where I’d split my productivity stack back into separate tools were too painful to navigate. That’s the real lock-in. Not pricing, not features, but habit formation. Raycast is now how I think about interacting with my computer.

The Things I Wish Raycast Would Add

If I’m paying $8/month, I get to make demands. Here’s my wishlist: Better mobile companion. The iOS app exists but it’s barely functional. I want to access my clipboard history and snippets on my phone. Offline AI. Let me run a local LLM for sensitive queries instead of sending everything to OpenAI. Better extension discovery. The extension store is organized poorly. I want tags, ratings, and usage statistics. [BBC] Snippet templates for common workflows. Give me a marketplace of snippet packs for developers, writers, support teams. Integration with native macOS features. Why can’t I trigger Shortcuts directly from Raycast without installing an extension? Productivity analytics. Show me which commands I use most, which extensions I never touch, and where I spend my time. None of these are dealbreakers. They’re nice-to-haves. But they’d make the $8/month feel more justified.

What Competitors Are Doing

Alfred is still good. It’s fast, stable, and has a massive workflow library. But it feels like software from 2015. The UI is dated, the extension system is clunky, and there’s no real AI integration. LaunchBar is powerful but has an even steeper learning curve than Raycast. It’s for people who want maximum control and don’t care about aesthetics. Apple’s Spotlight is improving. macOS Sonoma added better search, rich previews, and actions. It’s still not fast enough for power users, but it’s good enough for most people. The real competition isn’t other launchers. It’s AI assistants. If ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini add deep macOS integration, they could make launchers obsolete. Why search for a file when you can ask “show me the proposal I wrote last Tuesday”? Raycast’s advantage is speed and local integration. AI assistants are cloud-based and slower. But that gap is narrowing. In five years, we might not need launchers at all. [AFFILIATE]

The Real Cost: Time Investment

Here’s what reviews don’t mention: Raycast requires setup time. Installing extensions, configuring shortcuts, building snippets, learning commands—all of this takes hours. I spent probably 10-15 hours over the first month tweaking my configuration. I spent another 5-10 hours over the following year refining workflows. That’s 20+ hours of investment. The payoff is that I save about 45 minutes per week (based on RescueTime data). At that rate, I break even after six months and start seeing net gains. But only if I actually stick with it. Most people install Raycast, use it for a few days, and go back to their old tools because the learning curve feels too steep. The tool isn’t the problem—the commitment is.

Final Thoughts

After 18 months with Raycast Pro, I’m not sure I’m paying for the Pro features. I’m paying for the ecosystem, the momentum, and the consolidation. The free version would probably be enough. But I keep paying because the cost is low enough that I don’t think about it, and the risk of losing cloud sync or hitting clipboard history limits isn’t worth $8/month. This is both the best and worst thing about subscription software. It’s low-commitment enough that you keep paying even when you’re not sure it’s worth it. But it’s high-value enough that canceling feels like a downgrade. Would I recommend Raycast Pro? Yes, with caveats. Try the free version for a month. Really commit to learning it. If you find yourself using it fifty times a day, consider Pro. If you use it occasionally, stick with free. [BBC] The launcher didn’t replace my workflow. It became my workflow. And eighteen months in, I can’t imagine working without it.

Practical Tips If You’re Switching

If this review convinced you to try Raycast, here are the things I wish someone had told me: Start with just the launcher. Don’t install 20 extensions on day one. Just use it to launch apps for a week. Build muscle memory before adding complexity. Set a hotkey you’ll actually use. I use Cmd+Space (replacing Spotlight). Some people use Option+Space or Control+Space. Pick something fast. Install five extensions, max. GitHub, Google Translate, Spotify, and whatever specific tools you use daily. Ignore the rest until you need them. Create three snippets. Your email address, a meeting template, and one thing you type often. Don’t create 50 snippets at once. You’ll never remember them. Use window management every day. Force yourself to use Raycast for window snapping instead of your mouse. This builds the habit of opening Raycast constantly. Read the tips that appear after commands. Raycast shows keyboard shortcuts and tips after most actions. Actually read them. They teach you faster patterns. Join the Slack community. The Raycast Slack has 15,000+ users sharing workflows, extensions, and troubleshooting help. It’s the best resource for learning. [AFFILIATE]

The One Thing That Changed Everything

If I had to pick the single feature that made Raycast indispensable, it’s not AI or snippets or clipboard history. It’s search speed. Raycast finds what I need before I finish typing. That responsiveness creates a feedback loop: the faster it responds, the more I use it. The more I use it, the better it gets at predicting what I need. The better it predicts, the more I trust it. Trust is the right word. I trust that when I press my hotkey and start typing, Raycast will understand my intent and give me what I need. That trust let me stop maintaining mental maps of where things are, what apps do what, and which tool I need for each task. It’s a small shift. But over eighteen months, it accumulated into something that feels like having a more capable operating system. And that’s ultimately what keeps me subscribed. Not the features. Not the AI. Just the compounding returns of a tool that gets out of your way and lets you work.

What Happens Next

Raycast is still a young company. They raised $30 million in Series A funding last year. They’re hiring aggressively. They’re building new AI features, a Windows version (finally), and enterprise offerings. This could go two ways. Either they maintain their focus on speed and simplicity, or they bloat the product chasing enterprise contracts and feature parity with Microsoft or Google. I’m cautiously optimistic. The team has resisted adding flashy features that would slow down the core launcher. They’ve kept the free version generous instead of crippling it to drive Pro subscriptions. They’ve maintained community extension support instead of locking everything behind official APIs. But I’ve watched too many productivity tools die under the weight of their own ambition. Wunderlist became Microsoft To Do and lost everything that made it special. Sunrise Calendar got acquired by Microsoft and shut down. Mailbox got acquired by Dropbox and shut down. [BBC] The pattern is clear: build something users love, get acquired or raise too much money, lose focus, die slowly. Raycast is at the “raise too much money” stage. What happens next will determine whether I’m still using it in 2030 or writing a eulogy about another great productivity tool that got ruined by growth. For now, though, it’s the best launcher on macOS. And I’m glad I spent 18 months learning whether the Pro version is actually worth it. It is. Barely. But it is.

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