Why can Mac developers absolutely never resist making dated Win9x / Windows XP / BSOD references every time they make a port of their software to Windows? Zed did the same thing recently and it was just as overplayed.
Developers please, when you do this, you are telling your audience, the people you want to pay you money for your work, "Yeah, we think you suck, but here's some thing we finally got around to porting over" - why would you do that?
Hooray! Finally someone is trying to bring paid subscriptions, AI slop, and proprietary ripoffs of popular FOSS tools to Windows. Why didn't Microsoft ever think of this?
The biggest feature that was missing when I was testing the closed beta was Window Management! Hope that made / makes it into this version of the app soon.
Great piece of software and proud to advocate for its use on macOS to anyone willing to listen.
I'm currently trying both Raycast windows (beta) and Flow Launcher. I've never really used this kind of launcher before (just the highly frustrating Windows main search feature).
- Raycast has a nice UI that can expand to work well with extensions
- Flow is faster to use. With Raycast you often need to enter an extension to finish your action. To launch a scrip on Flow I just type "r [shortcut] -> enter" while Raycast is "quicklinks -> enter -> [shortcut] -> enter. [edit, with minimal setup using aliases, you can have similar speed. See __jonas comment below]
- Performance-wise, Raycast was often eating my RAM, but a dev mentioned it's expected in the beta, they'll fix it for the launch. Otherwise, both feel snappy
- Both seem to have enough community support and extensions
- I never really tried the AI features, I don't know if it's the right place for me to augment my workflow w/ it
Curious about the experience of others with these tools or similar ones
I'm not sure I see the benefit of this over PowerToys beyond system-wide indexing for file search (which I'd want in Explorer, not a separate launcher app). Let alone the premium tiers.
- AI? What's the benefit beyond agents in more domain-specific environments (or gen-purpose site) vs native to a launcher app?
- Custom window management is available with PowerToys
- Unlimited clipboard history - I'm not sure I want or need this over PowerToys retaining it for system uptime.
- (Free?) Extension library looks a step beyond what's currently available for PowerToys' Command Palette, but will Raycast gain more Windows-focused extensions faster than Command Palette does?
Competition is good, but I don't see how this adds value as a premium service beyond PowerToys
A little bit irrelevant, but as a Mac user I couldn't prevent Raycast from phoning home even though I disabled AI, telemetry etc. Finally I blocked all connections from Little Snitch.
As a tool I think it's superior to Spotlight, but I still have concerns about privacy, specifically why their developers think that it's okay to send requests without user's knowledge.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] threadDevelopers please, when you do this, you are telling your audience, the people you want to pay you money for your work, "Yeah, we think you suck, but here's some thing we finally got around to porting over" - why would you do that?
Great piece of software and proud to advocate for its use on macOS to anyone willing to listen.
- Raycast has a nice UI that can expand to work well with extensions
- Flow is faster to use. With Raycast you often need to enter an extension to finish your action. To launch a scrip on Flow I just type "r [shortcut] -> enter" while Raycast is "quicklinks -> enter -> [shortcut] -> enter. [edit, with minimal setup using aliases, you can have similar speed. See __jonas comment below]
- Performance-wise, Raycast was often eating my RAM, but a dev mentioned it's expected in the beta, they'll fix it for the launch. Otherwise, both feel snappy
- Both seem to have enough community support and extensions
- I never really tried the AI features, I don't know if it's the right place for me to augment my workflow w/ it
Curious about the experience of others with these tools or similar ones
- AI? What's the benefit beyond agents in more domain-specific environments (or gen-purpose site) vs native to a launcher app?
- Custom window management is available with PowerToys
- Unlimited clipboard history - I'm not sure I want or need this over PowerToys retaining it for system uptime.
- (Free?) Extension library looks a step beyond what's currently available for PowerToys' Command Palette, but will Raycast gain more Windows-focused extensions faster than Command Palette does?
Competition is good, but I don't see how this adds value as a premium service beyond PowerToys
As a tool I think it's superior to Spotlight, but I still have concerns about privacy, specifically why their developers think that it's okay to send requests without user's knowledge.