10 Best Raycast Extensions for Developers in 2026

Raycast's extension ecosystem is what turns it from a simple app launcher into a full-blown productivity operating system. With over 2,000 extensions in the Raycast Store, the hard part isn't finding extensions — it's figuring out which ones are actually worth installing. I've been using Raycast daily for development work, and these are the 10 extensions I consider essential. They save me real time every single day.

If you're new to Raycast, start with our setup guide to get the basics configured before diving into extensions. And if you want to unlock AI-powered commands on top of these extensions, check out our Raycast Pro discount for 80% off.

How to Install Raycast Extensions

Before we get to the list, here's how to install any extension:

1. Open Raycast (Cmd+Space or your configured hotkey)
2. Type "Store" and press Enter to open the Raycast Store
3. Search for the extension name
4. Click "Install"

That's it. Extensions install instantly and are available immediately — no restart required. You can also browse extensions at raycast.com/store and install them from the web, which opens Raycast and triggers the install.

Now, here are the 10 extensions I recommend to every developer.

1. GitHub

If you spend any part of your day on GitHub — and if you're a developer, you almost certainly do — this extension is non-negotiable. The GitHub extension brings the most common GitHub operations directly into Raycast.

What it does: Search repositories, view and manage pull requests, browse issues, check workflow runs, search code, and navigate to any GitHub resource — all without opening a browser tab.

Why it's essential: The number of times per day I need to check a PR status, find a repo, or look up an issue is staggering. Before this extension, each of those was: open browser, navigate to GitHub, find the thing. Now it's: Cmd+Space, type a few characters, see the result. The time savings compound fast.

Key features:

• Search across all your repos (personal, org, starred)
• View PR details, diffs, and review status inline
• List your assigned issues and PRs across all repos
• Check GitHub Actions workflow run status
• Create issues directly from Raycast
• Open any result in the browser with one keystroke

We wrote a dedicated walkthrough of every feature in our Raycast GitHub extension deep dive, including setup tips and advanced workflows.

2. Linear

If your team uses Linear for project management (and many engineering teams have switched to it), the Linear extension integrates your issue tracker into Raycast.

What it does: View your assigned issues, create new issues, update issue status, search across projects, and filter by team, cycle, or label.

Why it's essential: Linear is already fast in the browser, but having it in Raycast eliminates the context switch entirely. When a teammate pings me about an issue, I search for it in Raycast, read the details, and update the status without ever leaving my editor. The "Create Issue" command is particularly useful — I capture tasks the moment they come up, with proper labels and assignments, in under 10 seconds.

Key features:

• View active issues assigned to you, filtered by status
• Create issues with title, description, labels, assignee, and priority
• Change issue status directly from the list view
• Search issues across all projects and teams
• View cycle progress and upcoming deadlines

If your team uses Jira instead of Linear, there's a Jira extension that provides similar functionality — search issues, view boards, create tickets, and update status. The Jira extension is slightly less polished than Linear's, but it covers the essential workflows.

3. Notion

Notion has become the default documentation and knowledge base tool for many engineering teams. The Notion extension connects your Notion workspace to Raycast.

What it does: Search across all your Notion pages, databases, and wikis. Open pages directly, create new pages, and append content to existing pages.

Why it's essential: The single biggest friction with Notion is finding things. As your workspace grows, navigating through the sidebar becomes slow. The Raycast extension turns Notion into a searchable knowledge base — type a few words and jump directly to the page you need. I use it dozens of times per day to find internal docs, meeting notes, project specs, and runbooks.

Key features:

• Full-text search across all pages and databases
• Quick open — jump to any page by name
• Create new pages in a specific database or parent page
• Recent pages list for fast access to what you've been working on
• Append text to existing pages without opening Notion

4. Tailwind CSS Colors

This one is specific to frontend developers, but if you use Tailwind CSS (and in 2026, a huge portion of web developers do), the Tailwind CSS Colors extension is a small tool that saves a surprising amount of time.

What it does: Search and preview all Tailwind CSS color values. View hex codes, RGB values, and HSL values for any Tailwind color class. Copy the class name or color value to clipboard.

Why it's useful: When you're in the flow of building a UI, you don't want to context-switch to the Tailwind docs to look up whether slate-700 or gray-700 is the right shade. This extension gives you instant visual previews of all Tailwind colors with their exact values, right in Raycast. Quick lookup, copy, paste, keep moving.

Key features:

• Browse all Tailwind color palettes with visual swatches
• Search by color name or hex value
• Copy class name, hex, RGB, or HSL with one action
• Shows the full shade range (50 through 950) for each color

5. Brew

If you're a developer on macOS, you use Homebrew. The Brew extension brings Homebrew package management into Raycast.

What it does: Search for Homebrew formulae and casks, install and uninstall packages, view installed packages, check for outdated packages, and run brew upgrade — all from the Raycast interface.

Why it's useful: I used to open a terminal, type brew search something, wait for results, then brew install the package. Now I search directly in Raycast, read the package description, and install with a keystroke. It's also great for quickly checking which version of a tool you have installed or finding outdated packages that need updating.

Key features:

• Search Homebrew formulae and casks
• Install, uninstall, and upgrade packages
• View installed packages and their versions
• Check for outdated packages
• Open formula pages on formulae.brew.sh

6. Docker

If Docker is part of your development stack, the Docker extension lets you manage containers without touching the terminal or Docker Desktop.

What it does: View running and stopped containers, start/stop/restart containers, view container logs, manage images, and monitor resource usage.

Why it's useful: Docker Desktop is a heavy application. For quick operations — checking which containers are running, restarting a crashed service, or viewing logs from a specific container — opening Docker Desktop is overkill. The Raycast extension gives you the essentials in a lightweight interface. I use it primarily for container lifecycle management (start/stop/restart) and quick log checks during development.

Key features:

• List all containers with status indicators (running, stopped, paused)
• Start, stop, restart, and remove containers
• View real-time container logs
• List and manage Docker images
• View container resource usage (CPU, memory)

7. Clipboard History

Clipboard History is technically a built-in Raycast feature, not a Store extension, but it's so important that it deserves a spot on this list. If you're not using it, you're leaving productivity on the table.

What it does: Stores everything you copy and lets you search, browse, and paste from your entire clipboard history. Supports text, images, links, files, and colors.

Why it's essential: As a developer, I copy things constantly — terminal output, code snippets, URLs, API keys (temporarily), error messages, file paths, SQL queries, JSON payloads. Before clipboard history, copying something new meant losing the previous item. Now I have my last 30 days of copies (unlimited with Raycast Pro) searchable and available. It fundamentally changes how you work.

Key features:

• Search clipboard history by content
• Pin frequently-used items for permanent access
• Filter by type (text, image, link, file, color)
• Paste any historical item directly into the active app
• 30-day history on Free, unlimited on Pro

8. Color Picker

The Color Picker extension is another built-in Raycast tool that developers — especially frontend developers — reach for constantly.

What it does: Pick any color from your screen with a system-wide color picker. View and convert colors between hex, RGB, HSL, and other formats. Store recently picked colors for easy reference.

Why it's useful: When you need to grab a color from a design mockup, a website, or a screenshot, the Color Picker extension is faster than any standalone color picker app. Invoke it from Raycast, click on any pixel on your screen, and get the color value instantly in whatever format you need. The color history feature is great for keeping track of project-specific colors without maintaining a separate color palette document.

Key features:

• System-wide eyedropper color picker
• Convert between hex, RGB, HSL, OKLCH, and more
• Color history with organized color swatches
• Copy color value in your preferred format
• Menu bar color display for quick access

9. System Monitor

The System Monitor extension gives you quick access to system resource information without opening Activity Monitor.

What it does: View CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, network activity, battery status, and running processes. Identify resource-heavy processes and kill them directly from Raycast.

Why it's useful: When your Mac starts lagging — and it inevitably will during heavy development work — you want to quickly identify the culprit. Opening Activity Monitor, sorting by CPU, finding the runaway process, and force-quitting it takes 15-20 seconds. With the System Monitor extension, the same operation takes about 3 seconds. I also use the memory and disk space views to monitor resource availability before spinning up additional Docker containers or VMs.

Key features:

• Real-time CPU, memory, and disk usage overview
• Network upload and download speed monitoring
• Process list sorted by resource consumption
• Force-quit any process directly from the list
• Battery health and power status

10. Spotify / Apple Music

Music while coding is practically universal among developers, and the Spotify extension (or Apple Music extension, if that's your player) keeps you in control without breaking flow.

What it does: Control playback (play, pause, skip, previous), search for music, view the currently playing track, manage your queue, and browse your playlists — all from Raycast.

Why it's useful: The alternative is reaching for the Spotify app, which means leaving your current context, finding the app in the dock or with Cmd+Tab, doing what you need to do, and switching back. With the Raycast extension, you stay exactly where you are. Type the command, perform the action, and your music is handled. It sounds trivial, but when you're deep in a debugging session and a distracting song comes on, being able to skip it in under a second without losing your train of thought is genuinely valuable.

Key features:

• Play, pause, skip, and previous track controls
• Search for artists, albums, songs, and playlists
• View currently playing track with album art
• Add songs to queue or playlists
• Start radio based on current track
• Like/unlike tracks

Honorable Mentions

Ten extensions can't cover everything. Here are a few more worth checking out depending on your stack:

• VS Code Recent Projects — open any recent VS Code project or workspace directly from Raycast
• Vercel — view deployments, check build logs, manage environment variables
• AWS — quick access to AWS console services, EC2 instances, S3 buckets
• Slack — search messages, set status, open channels without switching to Slack
• Figma — search files, open recent designs, browse team projects
• npm — search npm packages, view details, copy install commands
• Kill Process — quickly find and kill processes by name (simpler than System Monitor)
• Timezone Converter — convert times across timezones, useful for distributed teams

The Raycast Store: An Overview

The Raycast Store is the central directory for all extensions. As of 2026, it has over 2,000 extensions covering development tools, productivity apps, system utilities, design tools, communication platforms, entertainment, finance, and more. New extensions are published weekly.

Every extension in the Store is free to install and use. Extensions are open-source and built by the community using Raycast's React-based API. You can browse the source code for any extension on GitHub, which means you can audit what an extension does before installing it and contribute improvements or bug fixes.

Raycast reviews all extensions before publishing them to the Store, so you don't have to worry about malicious code. The review process also ensures a baseline quality standard — extensions need to meet Raycast's UI and functionality guidelines.

Building Your Own Extensions

If you can't find an extension for a tool you use, you can build one. Raycast extensions are built with React and TypeScript, so if you have frontend experience, you already know the stack. Here's the quick version:

1. Run npx create-raycast-extension to scaffold a new project
2. Build your extension using the Raycast API (components, actions, navigation)
3. Test locally with npm run dev inside Raycast
4. Submit to the Raycast Store via a GitHub pull request

Raycast provides comprehensive developer documentation, a template gallery, and an active developer community on Slack. Most extensions can be built in a weekend. For a deeper dive into what's possible with Raycast's AI features, see our Raycast AI commands guide.

Supercharging Extensions with Raycast Pro

While all extensions work on the free tier, Raycast Pro adds capabilities that make extensions even more powerful. Cloud sync keeps your extension settings, preferences, and configured accounts consistent across all your Macs. Raycast AI can be used alongside extensions — for example, copying content from a GitHub PR via the extension and then asking Raycast AI to summarize the changes.

Right now, you can get 80% off Raycast Pro with a free 14-day trial. The discount applies automatically — no coupon code needed. If you're already getting value from the free extensions listed here, Pro takes it to the next level.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I install Raycast extensions?

Open Raycast, type "Store" to open the Extension Store, search for the extension you want, and click "Install." The extension is available immediately — no restart required. You can also install extensions from the Raycast website at raycast.com/store, which triggers installation through the Raycast app.

Are Raycast extensions free?

Yes, all Raycast extensions in the Store are free to install and use. Extensions are built by the community and the Raycast team. Some extensions connect to third-party services that may require their own subscriptions (e.g., GitHub, Linear, Notion), but the Raycast extensions themselves are always free.

Can I create my own Raycast extensions?

Yes. Raycast extensions are built with React and TypeScript using the Raycast API. You can scaffold a new extension with npx create-raycast-extension, develop it locally, and publish it to the Raycast Store for others to use. Raycast provides comprehensive developer documentation and an active community.

How many Raycast extensions are available?

The Raycast Store has over 2,000 extensions as of 2026, covering development tools, productivity apps, system utilities, design tools, communication platforms, and more. New extensions are published weekly by the community, and the catalog continues to grow rapidly.