Raycast on the Mac is a highly effective keyboard-based launcher. It is fairly in style in Mac productiveness circles, and you’ll consider it as a customizable model of Highlight. You possibly can add extensions to it, use it for math, create customized shortcuts with it, seek for recordsdata, and now, in fact, speak to AI, utilizing a floating window on prime of something in your Mac.
Apple customers have requested an iPhone model of Raycast for a very long time. However issues that Raycast can do on the Mac, like entry the clipboard, set off extensions, and handle home windows and recordsdata, simply aren’t potential on the iPhone and iPad. However Raycast for iPhone is lastly right here in any case, and it is just the start.
Raycast AI on iPhone
Credit score: Raycast
Just lately, Raycast has develop into form of an all-in-one AI software, offering you with entry to the most recent and biggest fashions from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Deepseek, and extra at one low month-to-month worth. You get 50 messages totally free, and the $10/month Raycast Professional plan offers you with entry to smaller fashions like GPT mini and Claude 3.5 Haiku. The $20/month plan opens that as much as the fashions like Claude 3.7 Sonnet, GPT-4.1, Gemini 2.5 Professional, and extra.
Credit score: Khamosh Pathak
Raycast on the iPhone carries the identical design language because the Raycast app on the Mac. While you open the Raycast app on iPhone, you may see a textual content field on the backside, and a Voice button. On the highest of the web page, there are shortcuts to view all of your AI conversations, Notes, Snippets, and Quicklinks. The center half could be personalized so as to add any AI or Raycast motion shortcut that you just want.
By default, you may speak to Raycast AI utilizing the app’s personal Ray mannequin, which relies on GPT-4. However you’ll be able to faucet on the Mannequin button to modify to any obtainable mannequin, together with any customized AI fashions that you just might need constructed on Mac. You may as well add attachments, ask observe up questions, and extra.
Notes, Quicklinks and Snippets
Credit score: Raycast
In relation to productiveness, the Raycast iPhone app brings over three Mac options: Notes, Quicklinks, and Snippets. For those who’re paying for the $10/month Raycast Professional subscription, you may see that each one your notes, Quicklinks and Snippets out of your Mac will present up robotically on the iPhone (utilizing the Cloud Sync characteristic).
However even should you aren’t, you’ll be able to nonetheless use these options totally free on the iPhone; they simply will not sync to your Mac. You possibly can create 5 notes totally free utilizing Raycast Notes.
You will additionally have the ability to export notes in HTML, Markdown and in wealthy textual content.
What do you suppose to this point?
Quicklinks and Snippets are allow you to do a bit extra, although. Quicklinks allow you to create shortcuts for launching any URL with a faucet. This URL can take you on to part of an app, or web site.
Snippets is Raycast’s model of a textual content enlargement software, and is a extra strong model of the built-in Textual content Substitute software on iPhone and Mac. Right here, you’ll be able to create text-based shortcuts that broaden into any saved textual content, like your handle, or a piece e-mail template, simply.
A methods to go
And that is all there may be to this point. At present, Raycast thinks of the iPhone app principally as a companion to the extra highly effective Raycast utility on the Mac. In keeping with an interview with Raycast co-founder Petr Nikolaev (by way of The Verge) the purpose for the Raycast app was to place one thing in entrance of Raycast customers and see how they reply. The builders plan to construct on prime of this basis utilizing the suggestions from customers. If the Raycast app on iPhone is profitable, additionally they plan to construct an Android app (a the Home windows app is already within the works).
At present, Raycast helps the Shortcuts framework that makes it simple to open the AI chat and different options straight from Management Middle, or the Lock display screen. But it surely’s not the identical as changing Siri or Highlight Search. In keeping with the co-founders, they might like to convey extensions help to the iPhone app, however Apple’s sandboxed atmosphere will not enable for it. Though, they’re excited a couple of potential customized keyboard implementation that will allow them to convey a number of the Raycast options into different apps utilizing the system keyboard.
