flash

Flash and Raycast

Raycast is “Your shortcut to everything”: a launcher with clipboard history, snippets, window management, notes, AI and an extension store with thousands of entries. It is closed source, free for the core, with Pro at $10/month (AI, cloud sync, custom themes). Raycast 2, released in 2026 and updated weekly, requires macOS Tahoe and Apple Silicon and is built on native shells around system web views. It is not a hint tool; the overlap with Flash is the flashlight, window placement and clipboard history.

	Raycast	Flash
License, price	Closed; free core, Pro $10/month	MIT, free
Platforms	macOS 26 on Apple Silicon, Windows, iOS	macOS 14+, Intel and Apple Silicon
Permissions	Accessibility for windows and menu search; Screen Recording optional for AI screen awareness	Accessibility; Automation per browser for tab lists; Screen Recording only for :screenshot
Launcher	Apps, files, calculator, extensions, AI chat	flashlight: apps, browser tabs, tmux windows, native windows, emoji, math, units, currency, plugin data
Hints, modes	None	Hints in every app, NORMAL mode
Windows	Built-in window management; custom commands need Pro	Named positions, proportional frames, placement rules, directional focus
Clipboard	History, 3 months free	History plugin, 1000 entries by default, local
Extensions	TypeScript and React store, “thousands”	Plugins in any language over JSON lines, sandboxed; a Rust SDK
Configuration	GUI; cloud sync in Pro	One TOML file in your dotfiles
Footprint	350 to 450 MB of memory for v2, by Raycast’s own figure	A resident Swift app plus plugin child processes; see performance

Where Raycast is stronger

• The extension store. Thousands of ready integrations (Jira, GitHub, Spotify, Notion, calendars) with a polished UI. Flash’s bundled plugins number thirty, and third-party plugins are pinned by commit, not browsed.
• AI, notes, snippets, quicklinks, dictation, all in one product with design attention Flash does not have.
• Window management with a GUI and cloud-synced settings.
• A company and a release every week.

Where Flash is stronger

• It acts on what is on screen. Raycast launches things; Flash clicks the button in front of you, and keeps a modal layer on top of every app.
• Free, open source, local. No account, no subscription, no sync, and every network destination listed on the privacy page. HN’s Raycast threads are full of the opposite complaints.
• Runs on macOS 14 and on Intel Macs.
• A bar and widgets on the desktop, fed by the same plugins as search.
• Dotfiles. One file, validated in CI, instead of a GUI and a cloud.

Flash features you might like

• :flashlight with 1234 euros in dollars, @emojis.glyphs fire, @windows, @menus, and DuckDuckGo-style bangs for browser history (flashlight).
• window_move --position= and placement rules by app and title.
• Clipboard history, visible on the /clipboard help page.
• Terminal popups: a bar segment that opens btop or newsboat under it.

Moving from Raycast

Raycast	Flash
Launcher hotkey	["flash", "enter_command_mode", "--input=:flashlight "]
Calculator, unit conversion	Type the expression in flashlight
Emoji picker	:flashlight @emojis.glyphs
Window management commands	window_move --position=<name> mappings
Clipboard history	Flash’s built-in Clipboard page
Switch windows	:flashlight @windows, window_focus --direction=
Extensions	Bundled plugins, or write one (cookbook)
AI, notes, snippets	Keep Raycast, or another tool

Running both is common: Raycast as the launcher, Flash for hints, modes and the bar. Give them different hotkeys.

Checked 2026-10-14 against raycast.com, its pricing and changelog.

This site is open source. Improve this page.