Raycast’s Mac launcher is coming soon to iOS and Windows

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Raycast has become one of the best power-user Mac tools in recent years. What started as a launcher—a sort of faster, better version of Apple's own Spotlight tool—has become a way to interact with apps, manage windows, chat with AI, and more. It's sort of a modern version of a command line, both in terms of how powerful it is and how challenging it is to get used to.

Now the company is expanding: Raycast just announced that it plans to release its app for both Windows and iOS in the coming months. Both are already in the works, Raycast co-founder and CEO Thomas Paul Mann told me, and the plan is to launch the app sometime next year.

The Windows version will look and function much like the Mac app, Mann says, and if anything, Windows will give the app more access to control more things. He also believes Windows is the more important launch here: “It's reaching the rest of the market, right?” he says. “I think it's pretty exciting to redefine what it means to use a Windows machine.”

But porting the app to mobile will be more difficult. “You want system-wide integration,” Mann says, “but there aren't many ways to do that. You have to get a little creative.” For now, the company sees Raycast for iOS as more of a companion app than a full-fledged launcher, and the mobile app will likely be more visual and proactive than Raycast's traditional general-purpose text box.

Mann compares Raycast to an operating system within your operating system. “It ships with the basics and then includes the actual apps that you'll use to do your day-to-day work,” he says. Raycast has built both deep integrations with other apps and some of its own, including for note-taking and AI chat, and Mann believes the company can do even more to connect all of this with the other parts of your device.

Alongside the new products, Raycast also announced it is raising $30 million and said in a press release that it is focused on saving computer users from unnecessary routine work and context switching. This is a slogan you often hear from AI companies, and Raycast believes it can do even more by combining AI with pretty good software.

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