I'm a huge fan of Raycast, but as a Linux user, I was always disappointed it wasn't available on my main OS. This summer, I decided to just build it myself. This project has the goal of being interoperable with Raycast itself, including a majority of the extensions.
It's built with Tauri and Rust on the backend, with a Svelte frontend. The biggest challenge was getting it to run existing Raycast extensions, which required building a custom React renderer as well as making a custom API.
I also wrote a quick post, which I hope to expand on in the future, about this project. You can find it here: https://byteatatime.dev/posts/recreating-raycast
The project is still very rough, but I'm sharing it now to get any feedback you may have!
imcritic•6mo ago
You want some calculation? Run calc and do the calculation, do you save so much time by replacing the "run calc" step with "open launcher" that it's worth adding more software to your setup?
monooso•6mo ago
herrherrmann•6mo ago
kstrauser•6mo ago
There are good tools for doing each of those things separately. A good launcher that allows you to do any of them with such trivial overhead is a huge time saver.
throwawayffffas•6mo ago
So, its ctrl-s + c, python, enter, 1 + 2, enter.
Slightly more work but meh.
rafram•6mo ago
throwawayffffas•6mo ago
My main problem with that kind of launcher is that if I write "gimp" on my launcher there is only one correct answer, launching gimp. Everything else is just noise.
The choice to offer all that other functionality detracts from the main one.
kstrauser•6mo ago
MisterSandman•6mo ago
Raycast can all of do that automatically, and the only shortcut you need to know is Cmd-Space.
sublinear•6mo ago
I don't get it either.
eviks•6mo ago
Of course it's not the only shortcut. First, you might need to press tab several times and also pay attention to pick the right element from the app list (no need to do that with a launcher h
Then you need to open a new tab not to lose your current one (guess, this one can be avoided with extra config)
Then you need to wait for the network and hope your query is interpreted correctly by a very general search engine which are increasingly likely to push hallucinations as answers instead (for a calculator plugin you can learn syntax to have guaranteed match)
sublinear•6mo ago
Are we fr splitting hairs now on milliseconds? Yes, and words per minute are a measure of productivity!
eviks•6mo ago
mjmas•6mo ago
znort_•6mo ago
it's sad to see this core principle being increasingly ignored in linux, but i guess that ship sailed a while ago.
jraph•6mo ago
kstrauser•6mo ago
eviks•6mo ago
Yes, of course. The "open launcher" is 1 key press, an action you repeat many times a day. And it has 0 delay.
Your "run calc" can't beat this fluid UX
victorbjorklund•6mo ago
throwawayffffas•6mo ago
If I write teams, I want to get a single result that will be the teams app on my computer.
I don't want to get a wikipedia entry about teams, a random text document that has "teams" in it, news about microsoft teams, or the price of the latest shitcoin named TEAMS.
All that does is add cognitive load, regardless of whether the app is the first result, seeing and parsing the other results, takes focus away from the work at hand and contributes to fatigue.
I have a browser with an omnibox for the internet, search on my file explorer, and find and ag[1] in my terminal.
Specialized tools for specific jobs.
[1]. ag is like grep but faster also it's 30% shorter to type than ack the other faster grep alternative.