The Raycast beta for Windows already improves one of my favorite features

If you read my recent piece on switching from Windows to Mac, you might know that Raycast is one of my absolute favorite pieces of software ever. I absolutely love everything it offers, and when I heard it was coming to Windows, needless to say, I was ecstatic. The beta opened up recently, and I finally got an invite to try it for myself.

And yes, Raycast is every bit as great as I had hoped it to be. All the extensions I've installed on my Mac haven't made the jump to the Windows version yet, but there are two big ones that are already here, and I want to talk about them. These two tools, the emoji selector and clipboard history, build on what's already one of my favorite Windows features and make it so much better.

The Windows input panel is great

But it's also limited

I've already talked about this in a dedicated article, but the input panel is one of the best features of Windows 11. This panel contains both the clipboard history and emoji selector, along with other kinds of emoticons. You can access the emoji selector with Windows + . (period) and the clipboard history with Windows + V, and these shortcuts give you quick access to things you might need while typing.

Whether I want to add an emoji to one of my messages or paste text I had previously copied, I use these a lot to make my life easier. The clipboard history is a bit more useful for work and the like, though I still appreciate having quick access to my emoji and the fact they're automatically promoted based on how often I use them.

However, these features also have some limitations in their base implementation. The Windows UI in general isn't as responsive as it could be, but there are some more serious issues. Searching for emoji is a bit cumbersome as emoji only match very specific search terms, and the clipboard history has no search feature at all. Not to mention the clipboard history doesn't survive across reboots unless you specifically pin the items you want to save, and the maximum number of stored items isn't that long to begin with. It's an imperfect solution, to put it bluntly.

The Raycast emoji picker

Fast and reliable

Raycast comes with a fantastic solution that takes these features to the next level, starting with the emoji picker. One thing worth noting about Raycast is that while you can open the search bar and look for the tool you want, you can also create keyboard shortcuts that take you straight there. So, to open the emoji picker, I assigned the shortcut Windows + Alt + V, and it's even faster than the built-in solution.

One thing I like about the emoji picker in Raycast is that previews are large and you can see the full detail of these emojis much better than Windows 11's picker shows them. You also get to see more. emoji at once here, so it's easier to take your pick using the keyboard. And another benefit (in my opinion) is that when I enter an emoji, the menu is dismissed automatically, whereas Windows keeps it on the screen until you close it or click something else. I actually thought Windows let you customize this, but I can't seem to find that option now, which makes it much worse.

The best upgrade, though, is the searchability of the emojis here. Like I mentioned, Windows makes it a bit hard to find the right emoji unless you know the exact internal name of the emoji, but the search matching is a bit more lenient in Raycast, so you don't have to be as perfect with your searches to get what you want.

Clipboard history is so much better

It actually saves your history

The biggest improvement Raycast delivers, though, is to the clipboard history. As I noted above, the solution built into Windows is flawed and missing a lot of polish. Raycast runs laps around it and it's actually a fantastic solution for a clipboard history.

First off, Raycast saves your clipboard history and retains it across sessions. Restarting or turning off your PC won't make you lose your data. And you can also choose a time limit for how long items are kept, up to a maximum of three months if you use the free version of Raycast (you can make it unlimited with Pro). But even three months is an extremely long period to keep your clipboard history, especially when it includes images, too. Better yet, Raycast can even render copied links and show you a preview of what the copied link is in the history, so you can more easily find a page if you have multiple that start with a similar URL.

But that's not the best. The clipboard history in Raycast is also searchable. If there's a piece of text you use frequently, you don't just have the option to save (though you can save snippets indefinitely, too), but you can just search for it using the search bar. This has saved me so much time when I need to re-use something, even if it's been copied multiple days ago. It really is a huge upgrade. And of course, just like the emoji picker, I can access the clipboard history instantly with my own custom shortcut.

Just scratching the surface

There's so much more to Raycast

These two features alone make Raycast worth installing. It's more useful on macOS, where a clipboard history wasn't really available until macOS Tahoe, but even on Windows, the clipboard history and emoji picker work so much more smoothly that it's worth the upgrade. But that's just the beginning of the cool things with Raycast. With the huge extension platform it comes with, you can do so much more beyond just replicating Windows features. Finding and downloading YouTube videos, easily put the computer to sleep or shut it down using the keyboard, launching apps quickly, there's a ton to love about this app. But even if you don't want to get too complex, I highly recommend checking it out. Only the macOS version is widely available, but you can sign up for the Windows beta if you're curious.