RayCast Review 2024- SuperCharge Your Productivity with this LMS

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Picture this: You are sitting in your study room to conduct your research about an assignment topic. You may need a calendar, calculator, any focus app, or ChatGPT to do your study. On your Mac, you may need to scroll down your application folder in Launchpad or Finder to find your desired application. You may need to search your desired websites on your Mac. You may open Spotlight by using the Command+Spacebar shortcut.

In these types of scenarios, you must have wished that you had total control over your Mac so that you could speed up your research and studying time. So, if you are looking for an alternative to Spotlight and multiple tabs management, RayCast is an ideal option for you.

Let's Meet RayCast

RayCast promises to supercharge your productivity with its launcher pad. It is a free extension of your Mac that provides you various features that are in Spotlight along with some additional and cool features. It is a fully native MacOS app that treats extensions as first-class citizens.

It is a launcher app so you can use it to launch your Mac applications. Its action panel acts as a hub that has all your frequently used actions and apps. Except for launching the app, it has a lot of in-built extensions such as a calendar, calculator and search bar. It can make your computer sleep too whenever you want. 

Not only this, it has a store that contains some additional extensions such as Spotify and various AI tools. Thousands of extensions are added to this platform’s store. These are beneficial for everyone such as developers, graphic designers, teachers, students, writers and professionals.

This brilliant launch pad was released in October 2020. Since its launch, 100,000 people have been using this app daily. There are almost 13000 members in the community who are helping each other to become more efficient in their fields. It has a feature that allows you to create extensions and share them on its store so that other people can also use them. Its model is a lot similar to the Apple store so you can take a lot of benefits from it.

How to Start RayCast?

You need to go to its website to download its extension on your Mac. When you download it, this app will take you through various steps of using the app. That guide will help you a lot in understanding and learning this application.

It will prompt you to use a keyboard shortcut for using this extension. The default one is Option+Space, but you can use another one too if you want. When you give a keyboard command through the shortcut key, you will be on its interface.

On the main screen, you can see a search bar and various application suggestions under it. These suggestions may include “File search”, “Google Search”, “My Schedule”, “Store”, “Clipboard history” and much more.

In the settings of this app, you can change the window style of RayCast. You can turn it into a compact style. In this way, you will only see the search bar option when you launch this app. The suggestions underneath it will not be there which makes the interface clean.

Let's have a look at some brilliant features and commands of this app.

Basic Functions of RayCast

Clipboard History

As a student, you must have to copy a lot of text from different resources for your research purposes. As a professional, you may have copied any important information from any resource to use in your tasks. But, the major issue we face is losing the copied text due to any mistake. 

That's why Raycast's Clipboard history feature is popular among everyone. You can find the history of everything that you have copied in it. You just need to research this feature in the search bar and it will give you the whole clipboard history of yours. 

This history contains the links, texts and email addresses you copied an hour ago, a day ago or even a week ago.

Calculator, Conversion and Time Zones Feature

Let's suppose you want to solve a simple math question while doing your homework. If you search for the math problem in Spotlight or Alfred, they will ask you to go to the Google Search option which can take some time. Luckily, RayCast doesn't direct you to Google Research.

You can do calculations, and all kinds of conversions and can know about time zones around the world directly through this app. You just have to go to the search bar of RayCast and insert your query. For example, the time zone of New York at this moment. The app will instantly provide you with the answer.

Window Management

You can manage your whole window through this app. It means you can resize your windows, move them to the right or left of your screen or split the screen to use two apps. You just need to enter the commands of right, left, and center and the window will move on the screen.

You can resize the app to a small size and move it on your whole screen through the mouse pad. Moreover, you can go to quick settings and can toggle between the dark mode and light mode. You can make quick system changes or can put your computer to sleep through this app.

Make Keyboard Shortcuts For Anything

You can set up a universal keyboard shortcut for anything. It includes launching any app, opening any file or doing any kind of action. These shortcuts can save you plenty of time on different tasks.

For this, you need to go to the extension tab in the settings. Click on the application or action you want to create a hotkey of. Click the record hotkey option and create a unique shortcut for that application.

See, it is that easy. You don't need to have any key shortcut app to do this task.

Launching or Uninstalling Any App 

You can launch or uninstall any app through this application. You just need to research it through the name or the short key and the app will open in front of you. Except for it, you can delete any app too. Spotlight also gives you the feature of uninstalling any app. But, after deleting any app, its files and data remain on your Mac which can cause inconvenience. 

In the RayCast, you don't need to worry about this. When you have to uninstall any app, you need to select it. Then, click “Command+K” to have a mini menu in front of you. This menu has an uninstall option. So, when you click on it, this will delete all the associated files related to it too.

Confetti

You are at the end of your presentation in the virtual classroom or meeting and want to throw confetti on the screen for a fun ending. For this, you need to go on RayCast, and type confetti. When you select it, this app will throw confetti on your screen. 

Except for these, there are various other common features of this app too. For example, a schedule app where you can add your assignment deadlines or meeting schedules. Text expansion is another amazing feature of this app. You can create snippets of your text or create various Apple reminders on this extension without downloading any app. But, the most amazing and advanced features of RayCast are its store and AI integration.

Store of RayCast for 1000 Additional Extensions 

You will see the store feature on this app when you open it. Otherwise, you can search for it and it will take you to the RayCast store. On this store, you can find numerous extensions of different applications. Developers have created these extensions for their or their team’s use on RayCast. This app has made these extensions accessible to everyone. 

You can find almost 1000 extensions of different applications on this app. You just need to find and download them. They will start appearing on your application tab of RayCast. So, you can use them from there anytime you want.

For example, there is an app known as Clean Shot X. It is used to take screenshots or do video recordings of your screen. You can download its extension from RayCast. Then, its features will start appearing on your application tab, and you can select any feature of it you want.

You can perform various tasks due to this store. It includes starting a Zoom meeting, translating text with Google Translate, or playing your music. You can use the Spotify extension to find your favorite album or playlist. You can use the Google Workspace extension to open any document in the Drive through shortcuts. 

Use AI Tools without Downloading Any App

There are various AI tools and models in this app that perform various tasks for the users. There are three functions that these AI tools are doing on RayCast.

Quick AI: When you need a quick answer to your question, you can use this AI aspect. You just simply need to write your question in the search bar of RayCast and it will provide you with the answer. So, you don't need to download any application or Google it.

AI Chat: If you want to have an extensive chat with your AI, you can do it on this tool. The AI chat is already installed in RayCast so you don't need to go anywhere. This chat window can be adjusted and remain on top of other apps.

AI Commands: You can select or highlight any text and give AI commands regarding it. These commands can transform the selected text easily. For example, you can give the command of fixing the grammar or rewriting the text and it would do it.

For these features, RayCast has collaborated with Perplexity, ChatGPT, Anthropic and Groq. Soon, other AI models are also going to be added to it.

Conclusion 

In short, RayCast is the ideal LMS system that can handle all of your tasks on Mac with ease. You can handle basic functions, AI tools and Store features on this app without any difficulty. It also has a Pro version that provides even more features for only 8 dollars per month. With it, it also has a team feature that enables you to create your team account on this app. In this, you can share links of extensions with each other. We believe that you all should give this app a try for handling your Mac.

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