Y’all use Raycast? I do, but I’m a little itty bitty baby user. Like I just have it replace Spotlight because it seems to work equally well as Spotlight for finding files and applications. But then has a few bonus features here and there. I use the commands to move windows around once in a while (but largely still use Moom for that), the emoji search is alright (but not miles better than the built-in thing), the calculator results look nice (but Spotlight does fine at that too).
It’s like I know there are interesting clever things it can do, I just don’t really know about them and have zero muscle memory for reaching for the little things I have seen.
But I’ve nearly started to like one! “Almost Maximize” is a clever window moving feature. Thanks Dave! You can already maximize windows natively, but both the ways do not appeal to me:
- Press the green (⤡) maximize window button. This always feels like too much commitment to me. It removes the window top bar, it makes a new “space”, it has this whole animation going into and out of it. Too much.
- Option-click the green (⤡) maximize window button. This is more chill, it just makes the window take up all the space on the whole screen. I prefer it, but, it fills the entire window. I know that’s it’s job, but I kinda like a little space left over.
“Almost Maximize” has the window take up 90% of the screen, leaving space around it.
I generally prefer that, because the space that it leaves often has little peaks of other windows I might want, or, more importantly, access to icons on the deskop, which there is a decent chance I want to get my hands on (or drag more things to). I’m a super clean desktop guy, so if there are files there, they are actively being used for something.
You can configure “Almost Maximize” to be 90% down to 60%. But if I’m being nitpicky, I actually want like 95%. I usually just want the right side is all.
What I like is that Raycast had the idea to built it in and name it something memorable. But I think my Moom setting is still going to win out for now:
Any Raycast commands you love?
You can use the built in Raycast calculator for not just math! Ask it something like “days since ” or “10cm to in”.
My current top-favorite Raycast feature is showing and joining a meeting! It’s very nearly a zero-action feature, too, but it needs to be enabled first.
Once enabled, invoking Raycast will display your upcoming meeting (or current meeting) when the current time is within 5 minutes of the calendar event’s start time. Pressing the down arrow then enter launches the join link for the meeting. No extra steps, no app switching, just [raycast trigger] [down] [enter]!
When I saw this on a friend’s screen during a call I dropped everything and installed Raycast immediately.
I love to use Raycast for:
– Copy / Paste history and search through it
– Storing text snippets: tax id, bank account number
– Quicklinks (kind of bookmarks): open PRs on Github, sorted by last update; Or a particular project in VS Code
– Pick color: https://www.raycast.com/thomas/color-picker
Nice. It’s almost like Raycast consolidates a bunch of utility apps much like Notion (for me) replaced a bunch of organizational and information apps.
I’m sure there is a billion more, just gotta build that muscle memory. I do like the idea of consolidation and leaning on a certain way of doing utility style actions. But they need to be good, so we’ll see! I don’t wanna use anything less useful or with less polish, and the focus on a do-one-thing-well utility app seems like it would be likely to have the leg up.
I could write an essay on it but I won’t
The one thing that is absolutely amazing that I will mention is the utility for password managers and MFA apps. Whichever one(s) you’re using there will be a Raycast extension for it. I’m using Bitwarden and Authy and they both work amazingly, being able to quickly search both of them makes logging into anything that isn’t a browser soooo much nicer.
@Chris – there’s the “First Three Fourths” Command that might scratch your itch. While not as large as your own “First Eight Ninths” it’s still quite powerful