Continuing my article about how I use Raycast
My meeting toolkit
Have you ever struggled to check your appearance before a video call? With the “Open Camera” command, you can preview your appearance without joining the call!
Straight after I check on how I look, I generally want to join a call. Raycast integrates with my calendar via native “Schedule“ extension and it provides an action to join to a call straight from main Raycast launcher!
And a nice UI for quickly viewing your schedule “My Schedule“:
System
A lot of system actions that I actively use:
Launch specific applications instead of the usual MacOS launcher
Lock my screen via the “Lock Screen“ command
“Empty Trash”
“Toggle System Appearance” to switch between dark/light mode
Quit specific application
System Volume manipulation
Via additional extensions from the store, I also:
Manage Bluetooth Connections via “Toothpick“
Speedtest my internet connection via “Speedtest“
See what’s running locally on a specific port (to probably kill it via the same extension) via “Port Manager“
Check my IP or query geolocation for any IP address or domain via the “IP Geolocation” extension
“Show Battery Information”
Music
I used to listen to some music without lyrics for some focused work. I like the ability to do most of the Spotify actions from wherever app I am without interrupting my focused work. When I want to listen to some specific playlist or song, I can go to Spotify UI and think about what I want to listen to. But when I’m in the middle of my work, those come to the rescue:
Toggling between play and pause is the most frequent thing so it is under “m” alias.
Switching tracks to the next “mj” and previous “ml“. All Spotify related stuff aliases start with “m” — Music
Skipping 15 seconds is “ml“ and backwards is “mh“. It is kind of mimicking Vim hotkeys. Also, those hotkeys are also working for YouTube Music UI
Liking a song is the least used one, but, again, it is about not interrupting the workflow of what I’m currently doing — “ms” (Music Save).
Downloads & Files
Raycast simplifies file management by allowing you to open, manage, and copy items from your downloads folder without using Finder. This functionality is powered by the “Downloads Manager” extension.
A similar experience for searching files in the whole file system using “Search Files“ is also achievable by Raycast.
Developer Experience when Developing Own Extensions
I have developed a couple of extensions, and I can truly say that this is well-thought-out and enjoyable, from the developer documentation to publishing your extension. It is developer-friendly and the technology that is used to develop them is pretty mainstream — React, Node.js, and TypeScript.