Raycast vs Alfred

[mashinhead]

Any Raycast users out there? I have been a long-time Alfred user, and I love the speed of it. I recently learned about Raycast and I've used it a little bit. I love Alfred's speed, but finding and downloading and understanding what you're getting from a workflow isn't the best experience. From what I can see Raycast has much better integrations. But isn't as fast - and requires way more out of the box setup to get the same speed as Alfred.


Would love some other perspectives?

 

[MisterSavage]

In trying to decide between the two I went with Alfred because of this Reddit post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/13do4n8

 

[bejib66000]

I tried using it as a replacement for Alfred. Unfortunately, I had a bad experience with it. The text readability was worse than in Alfred, and Raycast turned out to be slower. I also encountered issues with basic tasks like copying, cutting, and pasting text. It seemed that Raycast simply couldn't keep up with the speed of my workflow. In the end, I went back to using Alfred.

 

[ignatius345]

Been using Alfred for probably like 7 or 8 years now. My usage is pretty basic (launching apps, finding files, a few custom text snippets, launching web searches). Frankly Alfred already does way more than I have managed to find a use for. It's generally lightning fast and reliable. The only complaint I've had is that sometimes it fails to surface a file I know is on my drive — but I suspect that's maybe a Spotlight issue.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

I tried to use Raycast, but having to invoke a special command every time I wanted to search for info in a specific type of file was slowing me down a lot.

Alfred seems fine but I don't want to drop the money on Powerpack without being able to try it out. Also it seems that making some workflows work would require installing Python 2 and it's just not something I am all that interested in.

Ended up just going back to Spotlight.

 

[MisterSavage]

I tried to use Raycast, but having to invoke a special command every time I wanted to search for info in a specific type of file was slowing me down a lot.

Alfred seems fine but I don't want to drop the money on Powerpack without being able to try it out. Also it seems that making some workflows work would require installing Python 2 and it's just not something I am all that interested in.

Ended up just going back to Spotlight.

I found free Alfred still a better Spotlight alternative even though I eventually did end up getting the Powerpack.

 

[SnowCrocodile]

I found free Alfred still a better Spotlight alternative even though I eventually did end up getting the Powerpack.

How so ?

I tried it and didn't quite find it all that great.


For example, even after I added all options to default search results (Essentials and Extras) it still wouldn't search everywhere.

Say, I am looking for information associated with someone named Jeremiah. When I type the name into Spotlight, the search results contain everything - contact cards, emails, documents etc. I can then "drill down" into a subtype (e.g. emails) to find more matches. When I searched with Alfred, it only displayed contacts. I am sure that there's a way to make it show everything, but it seemed like a lot of work to just get the same level of usability I can already get with Spotlight out of the box.

Also, it expects me to memorize different keyboard shortcuts to do common tasks from what MacOS uses (e.g. to preview a file in search results, instead of space have to press shift).

Is there any functionality that I may be missing that would make up for all this ?

 

[MisterSavage]

How so ?

I tried it and didn't quite find it all that great.


For example, even after I added all options to default search results (Essentials and Extras) it still wouldn't search everywhere.

Say, I am looking for information associated with someone named Jeremiah. When I type the name into Spotlight, the search results contain everything - contact cards, emails, documents etc. I can then "drill down" into a subtype (e.g. emails) to find more matches. When I searched with Alfred, it only displayed contacts. I am sure that there's a way to make it show everything, but it seemed like a lot of work to just get the same level of usability I can already get with Spotlight out of the box.

Also, it expects me to memorize different keyboard shortcuts to do common tasks from what MacOS uses (e.g. to preview a file in search results, instead of space have to press shift).

Is there any functionality that I may be missing that would make up for all this ?

Ah, that's a different workflow from me. I almost never search for the contents of files, but I'm constantly jumping to different directories and using different source files.