Mike mentions disabling Alfred and going back to using Spotlight as an app launcher. I’ve been having similar thoughts.
I use Raycast, and its latest release notes are mostly around features of the $8/month subscription version. I thought, there’s no way I’m paying monthly for what’s basically a glorified app launcher, which brought me back to thinking about Spotlight.
My first app launcher was Quicksilver and it immediately became an intregal part of using a Mac. From there I moved to LaunchBar and then to Alfred before settling on Raycast. I still sometimes fire up LaunchBar because it’s great for navigating the filesystem. And it’s faster.
My first week with Raycast was spent installing extensions and writing little scripts: everything from deploying my websites to resizing images to creating notes. Then, I barely used any of them. The only fancy Raycast extension I use regularly is for resizing images selected in the Finder.
So after getting all huffy about not paying for a Raycast subscription, I dropped all the way back to Spotlight. It lasted two hours. I don’t want to even use a computer if there’s no clipboard history. If I need to install another app to get that, then why not just use the one built into the app launcher?
As a way to feel better about all this, I’m going to run with Alfred today and see how it feels.