Raycast

Raycast is a macOS productivity launcher designed specifically for developers and power users, positioning itself as a dramatically faster and more extensible replacement for macOS Spotlight and Alfred. Launched in 2020, it has grown to hundreds of thousands of active users, particularly in the startup and engineering communities. At its core, Raycast is an always-available command palette (triggered by a hotkey) that enables instant file search, app switching, system command execution, clipboard history access, window management, and integrations with developer tools — all without leaving the keyboard. The extension ecosystem (500+ extensions) connects Raycast to GitHub, Linear, Jira, Slack, Figma, Vercel, Tailwind, and dozens of other developer tools, enabling actions like "create a Linear issue" or "deploy to Vercel" directly from the launcher. Raycast AI (added in 2023) integrates GPT-4 and Claude directly into the launcher, enabling natural language commands, code generation, text transformation, and translation without switching apps. Raycast for Teams (2023) adds shared snippets, links, and extensions across an entire engineering team.