Comment by imcritic 4 days ago
I don't really see any value in such combines.
You want some calculation? Run calc and do the calculation, do you save so much time by replacing the "run calc" step with "open launcher" that it's worth adding more software to your setup?
On a Mac, opening the launcher means pressing cmd-space at any time, getting a popup text entry field, typing "1+2", seeing the answer, and hitting esc to dismiss it. That's the entire workflow for operating a calculator, launching an app, searching Google, locating a file, or whatever. I challenge you to do that operation with a separate app more (or even as) efficiently.
There are good tools for doing each of those things separately. A good launcher that allows you to do any of them with such trivial overhead is a huge time saver.
The way I do it is, I type python in a new terminal, the terminal emulator is running at all times.
So, its ctrl-s + c, python, enter, 1 + 2, enter.
Slightly more work but meh.
That's what your browser is for.
My main problem with that kind of launcher is that if I write "gimp" on my launcher there is only one correct answer, launching gimp. Everything else is just noise.
The choice to offer all that other functionality detracts from the main one.
The reason I don't use this kind of thing, is the time spent parsing the results.
If I write teams, I want to get a single result that will be the teams app on my computer.
I don't want to get a wikipedia entry about teams, a random text document that has "teams" in it, news about microsoft teams, or the price of the latest shitcoin named TEAMS.
All that does is add cognitive load, regardless of whether the app is the first result, seeing and parsing the other results, takes focus away from the work at hand and contributes to fatigue.
I have a browser with an omnibox for the internet, search on my file explorer, and find and ag[1] in my terminal.
Specialized tools for specific jobs.
[1]. ag is like grep but faster also it's 30% shorter to type than ack the other faster grep alternative.
Do you remember the command line command to convert 5:30 IST to PDT? Or convert $70 USD to SGD? Or what 17.3 years in seconds is? Or how many days are between 2024-12-30 and 2025-06-17?
Raycast can all of do that automatically, and the only shortcut you need to know is Cmd-Space.
If you ignore inefficiencies you won't get why the alternative is efficient.
Of course it's not the only shortcut. First, you might need to press tab several times and also pay attention to pick the right element from the app list (no need to do that with a launcher h
Then you need to open a new tab not to lose your current one (guess, this one can be avoided with extra config)
Then you need to wait for the network and hope your query is interpreted correctly by a very general search engine which are increasingly likely to push hallucinations as answers instead (for a calculator plugin you can learn syntax to have guaranteed match)
I use Alfred which is similar. I can do a lot of things with just the launcher. From small things like typing uuid and getting a uuid to open a dev project and launching all the tools needed for it by just typing p [name] where name is autocompleted. Could I open the terminal and do it there instead? Sure. But that is slower than just getting an instant launcher
Have you ever tried a launcher as powerful as Raycast? I can only recommend it. I use it for quick calculations, currency conversions, file lookups, translations, looking up http status codes, joining meetings, finding emojis, quickly checking my calendar, etc. etc. – so, perhaps a singular function might not warrant a launcher, but the sum of functions and keyboard-centric UI make it very valuable for me in my daily workflows.