Three Raycast Features You Installed but Never Use

#raycast #productivity #macos #clipboardmanager

Three Raycast Features You Installed but Never Use

Developer Tools · Productivity

Most people run Raycast purely as a Spotlight replacement, but its built-in features quietly replace a clipboard manager, a text expander, and a window-tiling app. They're Clipboard History, Snippets, and Window Management. This post walks through how to turn each on, the core usage, and the limits worth knowing in advance — all based on the official manual.

If you only use it as a launcher, you're leaving three apps' worth of value on the table

On macOS, the common setup is to install something separate for each job: Maccy or Paste for clipboard history, TextExpander or aText for text expansion, Magnet or Rectangle for window tiling. Split across three apps, you also juggle three sets of shortcuts — and if any of them are paid, you pay three times over.

Raycast covers all three areas as built-in features. You're not installing a separate extension — these already ship inside the Raycast you've installed, and you just have to switch them on.

Area	Common standalone app	Raycast built-in
Clipboard history	Maccy, Paste, CopyClip	Clipboard History
Text expansion	TextExpander, aText, Espanso	Snippets
Window tiling	Magnet, Rectangle	Window Management

Turning them on works the same way for all three

Open Raycast Settings (⌘ ,) and search for the feature name in the Extensions tab. For each feature and its sub-commands, you can assign two things.

Hotkey — a global shortcut that runs the command directly without going through the Raycast window. For example, bind something like ⌥ V to Clipboard History and your clipboard history pops up in one keystroke from any app.
Alias — a short abbreviation that calls the command from the Raycast search bar. For commands you use often, a Hotkey fits; for ones you use occasionally, an Alias does.

Window Management needs one extra bit of prep. Because it moves windows around, it requires macOS Accessibility permission, and the first time you run a command it prompts you to grant that permission in System Settings.

Clipboard History — copied items stop disappearing

This feature automatically records what you copy — text, images, files, links, emails, even color values. Run Clipboard History from the search bar and the list appears; pick an item, press Enter, and it pastes at the current cursor position. The point is that you no longer have to go back to the original screen to dig up "that thing I copied earlier."

Type filters and pinning

Once the history piles up, you can narrow it with ⌘ P to filter by type — text, image, file, link, and so on. Items you reuse often can be pinned with ⌘ . so they stay at the top of the list, and you can name an item to make it easier to search later. There's also a separate "Paste as Plain Text" option for pasting formatted text as plain text.

Retention period and privacy

On the free tier you can choose a retention period of 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, or 3 months; 6-month, 1-year, and unlimited retention are part of the Pro subscription. Privacy is handled in two layers. Content copied from password managers and the macOS Keychain Access app is excluded from history by default, and beyond that you can add apps to the Disabled Applications setting so that anything copied from those apps isn't recorded.

Snippets — stop retyping the same text every time

This feature lets you register frequently used chunks of text and pull them up on demand. Reply templates, repeated entries like account numbers or addresses, often-used command fragments — those are the targets, and a single snippet can hold up to 65,000 characters. You create one with the Create Snippet command in the search bar, and besides the body and a name, you can optionally attach a keyword and tags.

Keyword auto-expansion

If you assign a keyword to a snippet, the moment you type that keyword in any app it's automatically swapped for the full text — no need to even open the Raycast window. The official manual recommends keywords with a prefix symbol, like !email, ;;addr, or /sig, so they don't collide with ordinary words. You can also configure when expansion happens: swap the instant you finish typing the keyword, or swap after you type a delimiter such as a space (with the delimiter kept or removed).

Dynamic placeholders

A snippet body can include placeholders that get filled in at paste time. {date} becomes today's date, {clipboard} becomes the current clipboard contents, and {cursor} sets where the cursor lands after expansion finishes. For example, you can build a daily wrap-up template like this.

Name: Daily wrap-up
Keyword: ;;daily

{date} Daily wrap-up
Yesterday:
Today: {cursor}
Reference links: {clipboard}

Type ;;daily and the body above unfolds with the date and the clipboard link filled in, and the cursor sitting right after "Today:".

Migrating from another expansion tool

If you already use TextExpander, aText, Espanso, or PhraseExpress, you can import your snippets from those formats or from CSV. It works the other way too — the Export Snippets command lets you export, which also makes it a good way to back up your existing assets before switching.

Window Management — arrange windows by shortcut, no tiling app needed

It includes window-placement commands like left/right and top/bottom half (Left/Right/Top/Bottom Half), quarters (Quarter), thirds and fourths, maximize, and center. There are also commands like Restore, which puts a window back to its previous size and position, and Reasonable Size, which sizes it to 60% of the screen. With multiple monitors you can send a window to another screen via Move to Previous/Next Display, and it also offers macOS commands for moving between Spaces.

There are two ways to use it. Either type the command name in the search bar to run it, or bind a Hotkey to the few commands you use most (say, Left Half, Right Half, Maximize) and tile with keyboard shortcuts alone, just like Magnet. The usual approach is not to memorize every placement command but to pull out just the three or four you use often as shortcuts.

Things worth knowing up front

Window tiling requires Accessibility permission. Window Management commands won't work until you grant it.
Shortcuts can clash with an existing tiling app. If you leave Rectangle or Magnet running too, they may fight over the same key, so it's safer to consolidate on one or assign different shortcuts.
Long-term clipboard retention is a Pro feature. The free tier retains up to 3 months; anything longer needs a subscription. For just trying out the feature itself, free is plenty.
Some characters can't be used in snippet keywords. Backticks, quotes, spaces, and the like aren't allowed; letters, digits, hyphens, underscores, and similar are.
Keyword auto-expansion can be toggled. If unintended expansions bother you, you can turn off auto-expansion in settings and use snippets only via the search bar.

If it's already installed, start by switching one on

If you already use Raycast, these are features you can enable in settings with no extra install. Rather than learning all three at once, you're better off starting with the one area that bugs you most right now. If you bounce between copy and paste a lot, binding a single shortcut to Clipboard History gives the fastest payoff; if you type the same things repeatedly, Snippets; if you arrange windows by mouse every time, Window Management, in that order. Conversely, if you're already deeply settled into a dedicated tool like Espanso or Rectangle, the dedicated tool may have broader features, so there's no need to force a move.

Settings path memo: Raycast Settings (⌘ ,) → Extensions tab → search the feature name → assign a Hotkey/Alias per command. Window Management needs Accessibility permission granted in System Settings on first run. Add apps to exclude from clipboard history under Disabled Applications in the Clipboard History settings.

Sources

This post is not a hands-on review but an objective summary based on the official manual. Default shortcuts and plan boundaries can change between versions, so check the official docs for the latest before adopting.

Original with full infographics and visual structure: https://jessinvestment.com/three-raycast-features-you-installed-but-never-use/