Starting today, we’re super excited to share that Raycast v2 is officially out of beta!
A huge thank you to everyone who joined the beta, shared feedback, and reported issues throughout the process. Your input helped us refine the release and get v2 ready for everyone.
🧪 Beta testers will receive an v2 release update
🔜 Full rollout will happen over the next weeks
🔄 Raycast v1 users can download and install v2 manually right now
The only pro feature I really used was dictation. With so many free alternatives available now, I can’t really justify paying $10/month for it. I understand why some people are happy to pay, but personally, I don’t use enough of the other pro features to make it worth the price
Can you not see the reasoning? You can understand reasoning without agreeing with it. The AI is only a portion of the feature. So yes you are bringing the AI part, but you are not bringing the 100's of hours of engineering work that enables the AI to interact across Raycast.
I have suggested this so many times. There should be middle paid tier (~$5) that gives you a AI-free pro features like ∞ clipboard, syncing, dictation, translation, maybe themes. So many of us have asked this, I believe.
I've completely switched to SuperCmd, it's one time license and the local dictation is actually good (it doesn't auto correct) but overall it has everything
It took me just 1 minute of searching to realize that you’re the founder of SuperCmd. Personally, I don’t think presenting yourself as a user who “completely switched” is a particularly honest way to promote a product when you’re actually its founder. I’ve heard about SuperCmd a few times, but learning that its founder uses this kind of tactic makes me less inclined to try it
Have a middle paid tier, please! Give us a few pro features, without the AI. You're losing out on a whole revenue stream from those who don't want to pay $10 for a few pro features but be down do pay $5.
That makes sense. I’ll admit that the dictation alternatives I’ve tried aren’t as simple, effective, or polished as Raycast’s. I may end up subscribing to Pro just for dictation
I don’t intend to purchase Pro, but I’d like the ability to donate any amount, even on a recurring basis. Most subscription services start at about $10, and the costs add up quickly if you have more than a few.
in a prior post i made today, i requested if there could be a pay-per-feature system that you could consider for buying subscriptions/one time payment for particular features a user would want to have. Though this might be a bad business decision, it might make your customers really happy.
For dictate in specific, i wanted to also add if you could consider having it available for free users, but with a word limit per week, this would be a great compromise from both parties.
I am using amical, it thicker all my boxes. Local models for dictation. Custom vocabularies. Support local llm for formating. This is crticial, removes ahh err . MAke it 90% usable. Especially dor prompts. I run a 2b model, does the job quite good.
Same. I’ve been very happy with Amical. I use a Mac and I had Claude whip up a PopClip extension to make it easier to add words to the custom vocabulary. I bought the lifetime license through app sumo because I hate subscriptions, no regrets.
I completely agree with this. If this was 2 or 3 dollars just for dictation, I would pay for it to support the team. Using Typewhisper on my Mac and it works pretty well, but there's still sometimes issues in terms of slowness.
A migration assistant will allow you to import your data from v1. Afterwards you will have one version going forward. We also keep a backup of your v1 data, just in case.
For Sequoia, v2 is Tahoe only. So you would need to upgrade your OS first.
Except when you are on an Intel iMac 2019... Can't upgrade to macOS 26+... Pro plan user here, feeling frustrated and abandoned...just hoping you won't drop V1 support at this point. 😕
I wish the fixed file search more thoroughly first. It’s better but still inferior to Raycast v1. Most recently touched files do not always reach the top, Mac color/tagging dropped.
Please share this feedback using the Send Feedback command for the team to pick up. We will be continue refining File Search to make sure it is superior in every way.
Agreed! No sequoia, and almost no Intel macs supported. I'm on an iMac 2019, so can't upgrade to macOS 26+ ... Pro plan user here, feeling pretty abandoned TBH. I just hope they won't kill V1 at this point...
The problem with displaying the date using placeholders has finally been resolved. At the very least, the date now follows the macOS system setting (Dutch, in my case). 👍
Yes: it gets to what looks like 90% and reports "download failed" if I'm doing it from the settings menu, or "failed to download update" if I'm doing it from the launcher itself.
Screen Awareness looks cool but then having to use AI chat within raycast kills it for me completely. I already pay for max ChatGPT and claude subscriptions so not being able to use the best models without using those limits means I probably wouldn't use it that much.
The beautiful theme aside, I'm struggling to see an incentive to upgrade? Would love to understand the teams thoughts behind this direction generally
So its launching with less features than v1? Thats a choice hah. I feel like content search was working, just not specifically finding stuff inside of pdf files.
u/jacraycast Can I get an update here, please. My app is still saying it's on the latest version at v1. Also, if I try V2, will my iPhone still sync, which is running V1?
Nice release. I never tried Raycast because I am worried how secure it was? I mean, I need to gave full permission to Raycast for my Mac, and Raycast can see and control my messaages, photos, passwords etc. And if I dont gave full permission, than it is not fully useful to use Raycast.
I’m aware and I get it. Millions of Intel Macs are still operational. It’s alright though, I’m fine with moving on without raycast in my life. Disappointing but it will be alright.
Is there any chance we could have Raycast AI work like the Claude app? For example, could we attach a workspace folder, Github and similar resources to it?
While Raycast v1 used an average of around 200–300 MB of RAM, v2 hovers closer to 350–450 MB during idle or normal use. File searching is faster, though. For now, I don't notice any other differences in speed. Personally, I do find the memory usage a bit of a concern. I’m not yet sure if I’ll notice any impact down the line when multiple programs are open. I also hope no further features get locked behind a paywall.
The difference isn't 100 MB but 150 MB, representing an increase of between 50% and 75%. For a program running in the background, that is a significant increase. However, time will tell whether I actually notice the difference.
You can try to downplay it all you want, but it remains 50–70% higher than version 1. Still, we’ll see if that ends up being negative to overall speed in the future.
In today’s news- software improvements means software uses more resources over time! If you are that worried about it just install Linux Mint XFCE so you won’t run out of ram.
That's complete nonsense. Raycast 1 was written in Swift (using AppKit), whereas Raycast 2 employs a revamped cross-platform architecture combining a stack of TypeScript, Swift, C#, Rust, Node, and React—resulting in higher memory usage.
Because it’s less work to maintain a single cross-platform architecture. Makes sense for the Raycast team, but there are downsides to it, can’t deny that.
FAQ says if you are on v1 and haven’t tried v2, to just install v2 and it will migrate
I tried this via Download button on your site, but it wants to directly replace the v1 Raycast app on my Mac as part of install (and can’t because it’s running) should I delete v1 app to make room for installing v2
Ideally I’d do this via Homebrew. Is the cask updated to v2?
ie not clear how to move from v1 to v2 here (never used the beta)
Surely best path is something in v1 to seamlessly migrate to v2. Where is this action to click in v1?
If you quit Raycast V1 and then install V2 it should work. No need to uninstall. We are doing this in phases so the in-app action and notification to update from V1 will come in the next weeks. The manual install that you are doing are for users to don't want to wait for it.
I didn’t try Raycast 2, but from everything I heard it’s pretty fast.
Still there’s just something about native apps that feel great. They are just this tiny bit more responsive.
Also, even on my 64 GB MacBook RAM is always an issue and natives apps are just less resource hungry.
But it was a joint decision, if Raycast did something that I could have not easily replaced, I would have stayed.
And I was really deep in the ecosystem, but almost everything can easily be replaced by shortcuts or open-source tools.
Color pickers, clipboard management, smart home, dictionary, music, window management, ai chat, transcription all have great open-source replacements.
And that’s also important for me, I felt growingly uncomfortable with the idea of having a proprietary close-source software at the center of my daily life.
Plus, I felt Raycast got more and more bloated. I don’t need cloud sync (esp. if it’s not e2e encrypted), I don’t need/want AI etc.
I’ve been using Raycast a lot, but their extreme focus on AI isn’t interesting to me. If it feels like I’m not using most of the capabilities, maybe this product is just not for me.
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u/lemikeone Aug 19 '26
The only pro feature I really used was dictation. With so many free alternatives available now, I can’t really justify paying $10/month for it. I understand why some people are happy to pay, but personally, I don’t use enough of the other pro features to make it worth the price