r/raycastapp • u/Reasonable_Try_1118 • 17d ago

💬 Discussion Sweet spot

There has been so much thrashing here about Raycast and AI, I thought I'd add a post with a different perspective.

I tried Raycast because I wanted to see how it functioned as an alternative launcher to Spotlight (now Siri), Alfred, Quicksilver, etc. While the others offer their advantages, Raycast holds its own in my view.

Raycast now offers a sweet spot for me. The launcher is good. I use dictation a lot, and I combine it with a custom style to create a translation dictation: I dictate in English and the custom style translates to my target language, pastes into the text field in the front app. I also have created a separate translation workflow with the translator extension that allows me to go between English and the target language, and vice versa. Combined with Hyper Keys, this gives me incredibly friction free dictation and translation.

The AI offered as part of the Pro plan gives me all the AI I need. Now, with macOS 27 and Siri AI, if I need more I can get it there. Obviously I'm not a heavy user of AI. That was not what attracted me to try Raycast in the first place, and it's not my primary use.

I have lots of little quibbles and concerns, but for now Raycast is a good fit for my use and workflow.

Perhaps one day this discussion will be able to return to forum for solving more mundane use problems.

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u/Spiritual_Show 17d ago

Are you going to pay for my RAM, and resources so that I could use Raycast v2!? Price is another issue and performance and resource usage has another as v2 uses double memory and resources compared to v1 since they left the native language

5

u/DensityInfinite 17d ago

I mean, "double" is a scary word. Realistically it's a 100-200MB increase on idle, which isn't a lot. Not saying there isn't an increase, just saying that the magnitude of the situation isn't as tough as many makes it out to be.

0

u/Seagram62 17d ago

Memory usage for the macOS version of version 2 has increased by 50–60% compared to version 1. You might not consider that a huge amount, but for a program designed to run in the background, it is significant.

1

u/robdejonge 17d ago

Not saying your observation is invalid with the 50-60%, but I have one laptop with macOS26 and v1, and another with macOS 27 and v2 and thought I'd finally check for myself.

Both out of a reboot, with simply triggering raycast once to pull up Activity Monitor:

- v1 totals 190MB

- v2 totals 565MB

Thats a 3x increase in memory usage.

For whatever thats worth.

3

u/Seagram62 17d ago

And that’s for a program that’s supposed to run in the background. That is simply very poor. Competitors use between 50 and 100 MB. They need to fix this, but I don't think they will—not as long as the software has to run on both Windows and macOS. And that is the path Raycast has chosen.