The sun is out today; I can smell the freshly cut grass.

This weather, this smell, it brings back a shockingly vivid memory for me. It would have to be around 1993. I’m ten years old. I am probably in either fifth or sixth grade. Every day after school I’d sprint home from the bus stop. I’d bound down the steps, feel my feet hit the pavement, and like a bolt of blond lightning I’d take off. Feet moving as fast as they could. It’s the age where you feel like you can fly. Curbs are launching pads. Fresh grass a safe landing spot. Your neighborhood your world.

I’d get home and rush downstairs to my bedroom. Dive onto the bed, and pull out my copy of Calvin and Hobbes’ The Days Are Just Packed and lay there on my stomach reading the comics and eating Red Vines from a giant Costco sized tub.

It was perfect.

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.