Raycast 2.8 for Mac targets speed in file search, extension installs and startup

Raycast has published version 2.8 of its Mac launcher, and the company describes the release as being about speed. The only source for this article is the company's own changelog, so every figure below is Raycast's claim and has not been independently tested.

The changelog says File Search returns results up to 6x faster, that "slow searches are gone", and that typos are handled much better. It adds that indexing files is faster and uses less CPU. Raycast also fixed a few file-index bugs in the same release, including deleted or excluded files sometimes still appearing in results after a reboot, and changes made while the app was closed sometimes not being picked up on launch.

Extensions are the second area. Raycast says installs and updates are about 4x faster on average and up to 30x faster in the best cases. It does not say how those averages were measured or what hardware or extension mix was used.

Startup and scrolling make up the rest of the headline claims. The company says the app uses about 20% less memory at launch and starts faster, and that Root Search and other lists scroll up to 2x faster.

The release is not only about performance. Raycast lists smaller additions such as support for joining Gong meetings from Calendar, Greek letters in Emoji & Symbols, and a way to browse installed extension skills in AI settings. It also notes that Raycast now honors the HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and NO_PROXY settings for all its traffic, and lists a long run of AI Chat fixes.

What is confirmed is limited to what Raycast says it shipped. The changelog itself is unambiguous about the claims above, but it gives no benchmarks, test setup or baseline version, so the multipliers cannot be checked from this source. We also could not find a second independent report on this release. One note on dating: an earlier capture of the page was headed October 14, 2026, while the page we fetched on October 16, 2026 shows that date instead, so the exact release date is uncertain.

For a tool many people open repeatedly through the day, search speed and memory use are noticeable; whether the claimed gains hold up needs independent measurement.

Revised 16 October 2026: Guth re-read the original sources and rewrote this article. The earlier version remains available as revision 1.