11 useful Raycast extensions to improve your development workflow
Raycast quickly became an essential tool to me, replacing Apple’s Spotlight search and providing me immediate access to the tasks I repeat throughout the day. All this, right at your fingertips. Here I will detail the most useful, productivity enhancing extensions that I have come across so far.
1. Authy
This is probably my most used extension. I am constantly entering 2FA codes across various systems and having it available immediately as I’m asked for it is invaluable. It prevents me from having to pick up my phone or even open the Authy desktop app. A real time saver.
2. Random Password Generator
I frequently have to share sensitive folders and documents. I often do this by encrypting a zip of the files from the command line. This extension lets me generate a secure password as soon as I’m asked for it. I don’t need to save these passwords in a password manager, so this extension is ideal for my use case.
3. Laravel Docs
As a Laravel developer, I regularly find myself visiting the amazing documentation. Usually to refresh my mind on collection methods or validation rules. This extension takes me directly to the page I’m after without having to even leave my IDE.
4. Change Case
As developers, there are many different casing formats for naming things. This extension allows you to quickly switch your highlighted text out with another type. Like from camelCase to snake_case. You can even convert it to sentence case or, if you’re feeling brave, sponge case.
5. Unix Timestamp
I don’t reach for this one all too often, but it’s handy and quick to reach for when I need it. I can grab the current timestamp if I need it. More commonly though, I can convert timestamps to dates and vice versa.
6. Color Picker
Color picker allows you to grab the hex code of a colour from any application or website you are currently using. It helpfully keeps a history of your recent picks and can be added to your menu bar if you find yourself frequently reaching for it. You can then pair this up with a built-in feature of Raycast by pasting the hex into search, hitting enter, and converting it other formats like RGBA and HSL.
7. Format JSON
Format JSON does exactly what you’d expect. It’s a fast way to pretty print JSON for easier reading. Prior to this, I would search for a JSON formatter and this just saves me a step.
8. Base64
Again, like Unix Timestamp, I don’t reach for this one all too often, but it does have its uses. For example, if I want to decode the contents of the cursor query param when working with cursor pagination.
9. Brew
I think all Mac users are aware of Homebrew. This extension allows you to interact and search for new packages without even having to bring up your terminal. It does take a little longer to show any results compared to other extensions which I believe the time it takes to run the underlying the commands.
10. PHP Monitor
PHP monitor already lives in my menu bar and is quick to access. This extension, built by the creator of PHP Monitor, provides an even faster way to restart services and run commands.
11. ray.so
This extension won’t exactly improve your workflow, but it is a great way of sharing code snippets with co-workers and on social media. If you run the Generate Image command, it will pass your currently highlighted code directly to the browser. There are several tools like this (carbon, Showcode), and while all equally good choices, ray.so is quicker to run from your editor.
Conclusion
That brings my list to a close. Being honest, most of these I added some time ago. I think it’s probably a good time to scour the store again for everything that I’ve missed. There is no doubt going to be a lot more than when I last checked. Do you have anything you recommend? Are there any extensions you expected to see here that I didn’t include? Please let me know.