Along with Quicklinks and Fallbacks, another thing I love about Raycast is the great integration with Shortcuts. You can run any Shortcut directly from Raycast (and assign it a trigger keyword and/or keyboard shortcut directly), and if the Shortcut is configured to ask for input, it’ll do that right in Raycast. I use this for all sorts of things, but one of the most used is a very basic Message shortcut I built to text Hannah. By typing ‘m’ in Raycast, I get a simple interface:
Then I hit Tab and type my message. Hit enter. Message gets automatically sent to Hannah. I use this dozens of times throughout the day to quickly send a message without ever needing to open the Messages app.
The Shortcut itself is dead simple:
It just takes the input and sends it using the default Send Message action.
The combination of Shortcuts + Raycast can create an endless stream of simple little tricks like this. Another I use regularly appends text to a Ulysses note called “Liner Notes Ideas.”1 When I have an idea for an upcoming newsletter, I simply type ‘ln,’ followed by my thought, and hit enter. The note is added in the background without needing to open my notes app.
Speaking of which: I ran out of time to finish the newsletter today, I’ll have to try and wrap it up tomorrow.↩