Raycast Quick Guide

Quick Guide to Raycast

A guide on how I use Raycast. You can get 90% of the value of Raycast just with the free plan.

I posted this guide on X if you prefer that format.

Essential Setup

1. Disable Mac Spotlight
2. Install Raycast as your launcher
3. Configure keyboard shortcuts to match your workflow

My Keyboard Shortcuts

• CMD + Space - Open Raycast
• CMD + E - Emoji keyboard
• Shift + CMD + C - Clipboard history

Key Features

Quick guide on how I use @raycastapp:

Bet this gets most people 80% of the value of Raycast. It's all free features too.

Fundamental Setup

• Disable Mac Spotlight
• Have Raycast open instead
• Adjust keyboard shortcuts to fit your flow

My Shortcuts

• Set CMD+E to be emoji keyboard
• Shift+CMD+C for clipboard history
• CMD+Space to open Raycast

Snippets

• Create snippets of everything you type repeatedly. Such as: code snippets, LLM Prompts, calendly links, addresses, terminal commands.
• I preface all my snippets with a "!"

Literally just watch for a day or two and every time you type something twice in a day make a snippet.

Raycast Notes

• I use notes as my daily scratch note. Mostly to check off todo items

Screenshots

• Just the best way to copy/paste screenshots into apps.
• This is way better than drag/dropping them. Makes it much easier to insert images into AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor)
• Changed the default screenshot location so it doesn't clutter my desktop. Raycast auto follows this

Clipboard History

• Just start using this and you'll get it. You can easily search through everything you've copy/pasted recently
• Supports great fuzzy search

Emoji Keyboard

• With the shortcut set this is 100% of my emoji usage.
• Also has great fuzzy search for the intent of an emoji

Timers

• Just good quick timers.

App Launcher

• Core feature of Raycast probably doesn't need to be mentioned. But it's just the best way to open up apps on your mac.
• Even if you have the app open, this works as a switcher instead of CMD+Tab