Raycast setup: hotkeys, extensions and Spotlight comparison

This walkthrough covers the speaker's Raycast setup on Mac and compares everyday launcher tasks with Spotlight. He finds Raycast faster for shortcut lookup and file search in his examples, including comparisons on macOS 26 and 27. These are observations from his setup, rather than general performance benchmarks.

The tutorial maps Raycast to Command-Space and clipboard history to Command-4. It explains global hotkeys, aliases that work inside Raycast, and a Caps Lock hyper key that combines Command, Shift, Option and Control. A snippet example inserts clipboard text into a saved phrase. Other settings return the launcher immediately to root search and hide unwanted shortcuts from results.

Extension demonstrations include searching Notion documents and Bear notes, starting CleanShot X recordings, and completing Things tasks. Raycast also positions the active window, though the speaker keeps Moom and Shortcuts for automatic layouts when apps open.

AI gets a smaller part of the walkthrough. The speaker says he has connected a Claude API key but uses few AI features. On iOS, he explains how the Ask AI action accepts a text prompt and an image, with some models requiring Pro or higher paid tiers. The video does not demonstrate local model execution. It ends with his concern about whether the announced Raycast 2.0 hybrid approach will preserve the speed he values on Mac.