Today’s edition is about raycast.com, a tool that would beat Usain Bolt’s record if it were allowed to compete in the 100 m💨.
Note to all the Microsoft aficionados out there: this product is only available on Mac computers. In case you needed another reason to make the switch 🖥.
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Caveman tools
Every once in a while, a product comes along that profoundly changes the way we work. When this happens, our previous tools start looking like they come from the stone age. We drop them and never look back. The birth of Slack and Notion are some of those rare events that caused seismic shocks in the workplace and defined new standards for collaboration. But while they make us faster, these tools also create habits that get in the way of a productive day. Endless notifications and direct messages make some of us drown and often distract us from reaching our goals. “No product is perfect” is an understatement, and yet some come absurdly close to flawlessness…
Ok enough with the boring intro 🤯. What’s that fancy new product about?
All right all right! You want speed? You’re gonna get it! When’s the last time you opened your downloads folder that fast?
Not bad eh? All it took was pressing ⌘ + space to open Raycast and then a search for “do” returned the result I was looking for.
Jeez, that was really quick! If only there were other apps to speed up all the mundane tasks I have to do every day.
Ho ho ho! Christmas ain’t far away and I might just have what you’re looking for 🎅.
Instant everything
As you should soon come to see, Raycast is a versatile tool that saves you time, whatever the task. That comes in handy when you’re in a rush for your next meeting!
Calendicious
2020 is probably the year where you beat your record of Zoom meetings. And while you may be satisfied with the call experience itself, the steps needed to reach a virtual meeting still feel tedious. Raycast knows that and helps ensure you’re always on time. Here’s how: upon launching Raycast your next event shows up on top. Press enter and Zoom automagically opens!
There’s more! You can check your calendar at a glance 👀
Or tell people when you’re available. Raycast outputs results like this:
“Here's my availability for today:
- 09:00 - 09:30
- 11:30 - 14:30
- 15:00 - 16:00
- 16:30 - 17:00”
And even find a contact’s phone number and then call him right away.
Scratching an itch
There’s more to Raycast than meetings though. If you enjoy music you’re gonna love what comes next.
Say you’re at that delicious moment of the day where you’ve reached peak productivity. You’re listening to an epic song that helps keep you in a state of flow. You love that tune sooo much! The trouble is you can’t recall its name, nor the name of the artist, and you need to know. Now! So what do you do?
Move my mouse to the dock, click on Spotify, and get the answer from the Spotify app?
No! That’s the old way. If you do that you’ll get distracted. 2 minutes later you’ll have drowned in Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist. At that point, the concept of work will be as foreign to you as the Twistor theory of quantum gravity.
Instead, you can open Raycast in a picosecond, see the answer, and get back to what you were doing.
The browser is the enemy
Did you notice the common theme across the features above?
uh, they were developed by Raycast? 🥸
That’s not the point! The similarity between them is that they let you perform actions outside of your browser. This turns out to be powerful because:
it helps avoid horrendous context-switching
it’s faster than a browser. Yes, even if you’re running Chrome on a Mac Pro.
it helps build muscle memory. Trust me, you should care!
ultimately you need to learn fewer things! Now if you’re lazy like me this is the icing on the cake. Instead of having to remember a myriad user interface patterns from dozens of apps, you just need to learn one and you’re good to go.
Speaking of which, I wonder what these bad boy Google commands do…
Build-A-Bear
Now if Raycast doesn’t satisfy your needs, there’s more you can do than complain. You’re allowed to craft solutions to your own problems, and then even share them with others. And no, you don’t need a CS degree to get started 👩💻. Let’s look at practical examples that leverage two features from Raycast’s script commands: query parameters and inline results.
Search files in Figma
I often need to search files in a design tool called Figma, and I’d love to remove a few steps in that process. Ideally, I’d search from Raycast and then land on the Figma file I’m looking for on the web.
Yeah, something like that. Beautiful! Now let’s look at what it takes to build it.
Don’t look away! Code doesn’t bite. All we need is a script that opens a specific URL, with a query parameter that we’ll enter from Raycast. I bet you can achieve that in less than 15 min. If you manage to stop looking at those Instagram notifications, that is.
Check the price of Bitcoin
With Bitcoin entering another bull run, the urge to check its exchange rate has never been so great. How about a simple script that displays the price of Bitcoin in USD as soon as we open Raycast?
We first need to find a reliable source for the price of Bitcoin in USD.
Lucky for us, Coindesk has an API endpoint that does just that and doesn’t require authentication. Great! We call this endpoint, format the result with a bit of Python code, and then show the result inline. Fantastic!
Homework
2020 is drawing to a close and becoming more productive should fit nicely in your New Year resolutions 🤗. Here’s how to get started:
Install Raycast. It’s free!
Connect two extensions (eg: Zoom and your calendar)
Browse through the Raycast script commands and add one (eg: Spotify current track)
Bonus points: write your own script command and share it on GitHub
I’m here if you need my help for any of these tasks!
What’s next
First off, some acknowledgments are in order. Thank you so much for reading the first edition of Supercalifragilistic, you’re a true pioneer!
As with all firsts, there’ll be some misses, and there’s a gazillion things I can do to improve. That’s where you come in 😺.
It would mean the world to me if you could:
- hit reply and let me know if you learned something
- share Supercalifragilistic with a friend who could be interested
- tell me about a product I should consider for a future edition
Merry Christmas 🎄
Tanguy
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How would you differentiate this tool from Alfred? Looks very similar based on the mentioned use-cases
Great Post¡¡
Thanks for share this kind of tools ;)
Merry Christmas 😃