Raycast is bringing its super-powerful Mac launcher to iOS and Windows

Raycast has become one of the best power-user Mac tools over the last few years. What started as a launcher — sort of a faster and better version of Apple’s own Spotlight tool — has become a way to interact with apps, manage windows, chat with AI, and much more. It’s kind of a modern take on a command line, both in how powerful it can be and in how challenging it can be to get used to.

Now the company is branching out: Raycast just announced it’s planning to bring its app to both Windows and iOS in the coming months. Both are already in progress, Raycast co-founder and CEO Thomas Paul Mann tells me, and the plan is to ship sometime next year.

The Windows version should look and work mostly like the Mac app, Mann says, and if anything, Windows will give the app more access to control more things. He also thinks Windows is the more important launch here: “It reaches the rest of the market, right?” he says. “I think it’s pretty exciting, to redefine what it would mean to use a Windows machine.”

Translating the app to mobile, though, will be harder. “You want to be system-wide integrated,” Mann says, “but there aren’t many ways you can do that. You need to get a bit creative.” For now, he says the company is thinking of Raycast for iOS as more like a companion app than a fully-featured launcher, and he says the mobile app is likely to be more visual and more proactive rather than Raycast’s traditional all-purpose text box.

Mann compares Raycast to an operating system inside of your operating system. “It ships with the fundamentals, and then layers on top actual apps that you’re going to use for your daily work,” he says. Raycast has built both deep integrations with other apps and a few apps of its own, including for notes and AI chat, and Mann thinks the company can do more to put all that together with the other parts of your device.

Along with the new products, Raycast also announced it’s raising $30 million, and said in a release that it’s focused on eliminating busywork and context switching for computer users. It’s a pitch you hear a lot from AI companies, and Raycast thinks it can do even more by combining AI with plain old good software.