[OS] Rustcast - raycast inspired open source launcher
If you use raycast, you're probably impressed at what all it can do. Well as a developer, I was as well, and I decided that maybe I could make my own version, thats open source, just to check out how raycast worked under the hood and what all bugs they had to trudge through. That lead to the birth of my own tiny launcher, that I've recently been developing like crazy. There wasn't really any problem, just that I was curious into developing this app. The last image is how the app looked as its first ever version (2025 Dec) Now it has: - App Launching and automatic app discovery (obviously) - Clipboard history with support for images, text and URLs - Shell commands with optional hotkey - Aliases - Custom Theming - Calculator - Unit conversion - Emoji search (i've used it a total of 1 time) - Search with customisable search engine - URL Scheme for controlling rustcast from other apps / processes - Customisable positiong for the window - Opt in / Out of clipboard history - File search - App quitting (all apps or specific app) - Window tiling (12 different options) - Multi Monitor support - Opt out of icons - Use custom fonts - Vim mode based nav (CTRL + N / P for next / previous) - Toml based config - Customisable buffer rules - Random number generator (Easter egg) - Favourite apps - What apps to show on window open How does it compare to other similar apps? Raycast: It's open source and is on a goal of achieving feature parity. Rustcast is also going to be taking a more, "anti AI" approach where all AI features will be via extensions and its an Opt in rather than an opt out. Spotlight: The feature list should speak for itself, but rustcast supports many more features than spotlight and doesn't suggest random bs Alfred: Rustcast has many more features in comparison to alfred for free all while being open source. Pricing: $500 is not going into my pocket. It's 100% free and open source, and you can get an easter egg by sponsoring rustcast :) Github: https://github.com/MystikoLab/rustcast Website: https://rustcast.app Tech details: Rust + Iced (No webview) AI Code Policy: The contributor must be able to explain the code changed in the PR. Here's a recent example of what not to do: https://github.com/MystikoLab/rustcast/pull/298 Btw, Rustcast is also part of the MystikoLab project which is about making open source mac apps. I am the developer of rustcast, and sxitch. Personal Portfolio website have fun using my app :)
Collected discussion
im guessing its in rust ?
For the rewrite it in rust memes
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Done!
Nice app, is it written in Rust?
Yup. Rust with the iced GUI Library, so no webview.
Did you ever have a look at Alfred? Some of their layouts are a bit more, clear(?) than raycast. Their clipboard manager does a side by side display, can I configure this to show that way?
Hmm.. I've not used alfred before, but I could take a look into doing a side by side display. The best part about open source is you can always request features :) As of now dynamic display configuration is not a feature because of how difficult it is to do it for a non-web view app. But i could give options that you can compare 2 items or something. Could you also explain what you mean by a side by side display? Like 2 clipboard items at once?
hey you can look at vicinae
Yup! Vicinae is also really cool! I restarted working on rustcast because there was a new update recently and thats what inspired the UI refresh :)
nice work. best way to learn. fully supporting you with this
This is a cool journey from "let me see how Raycast works" to a full launcher. What feature took the longest to get right? Would defo sponsor!
Not sure honestly. I usually add a feature and then fix the bugs one by one. So the newest features don’t work 100% but they get better over time. Also saves me a lot of work of testing manually and also having to figure everything out myself.
Nice work. The fact that it is native/open-source is the most interesting part to me; I would lead with latency, privacy, and clipboard behavior in the README because those are the first things I would worry about with a launcher.
At first I was like "but why???" and then i saw "There wasn't really any problem, just that I was curious into developing this app." I appreciate this. good job and good luck!
I like this idea and find raycast to just be too much. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to open on my mac at all.
Extensions? Much of what I do in Raycast comes from extensions- some I wrote.
Interesting.
Homebrew?
Great app.
nice. not sure we need another raycast though
Raycast is an amazing piece of software, I agree. It has a lot of features baked in that competing against it is crazy difficult, but I'm just having fun making something open source for the community.
Some folks do not like the fact that Raycast is VC based. Now that complaint can be alleviated.
Lol thankyou!!
Nice to see a native launcher in Rust with no webview. How are you finding installed apps: walking /Applications yourself or asking LaunchServices/Spotlight for the index? I ask because the two fail differently. A manual walk misses apps on external volumes and needs rescans, while the index route inherits stale entries for apps that were deleted. Curious which tradeoff you picked for launch and for file search.