Appetizer vs Raycast

Appetizer is a free, open-source application launcher dock for Windows that organizes shortcuts and folders. A wizard imports shortcuts from different locations, after which icons can be arranged by drag and drop or grouped in menus. The dock can resize and display horizontally or vertically, with small, large, and extra-large icons, custom icons, and skins; two skins are included. It supports launching several items together, a hotkey to hide or show the dock, and minimizing it to the tray. Special items provide controls for the desktop, Recycle Bin, and Control Panel. With the standard PortableApps.com folder structure, Appetizer should detect applications and documents automatically. Version 1.4 is offered as a Windows installer or portable ZIP; the ZIP can run from a hard drive or USB stick and saves settings in the application directory. The download page lists Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. Plugins add functions such as USB document encryption, shortcut grouping, and closing the dock after launch, but require a restart after installation. Multilingual help and an API reference are provided.

Raycast is a set of productivity tools organized around an extendable launcher, where a keyboard-focused interface opens tools and runs workflows. Built-in features include Clipboard History, Calendar, Window Management, Snippets, Quicklinks, Notes, file search and Calculator. Its Store offers community-made extensions, with examples for Linear, Slack, Notion, Google Translate, Spotify, 1Password and Jira. Developers can build integrations with an extension API, and Teams can publish private extensions. Raycast AI includes chat, quick AI actions, agents, commands and extensions, and supports models from multiple providers. The free plan includes core features and thousands of extensions, with Clipboard History limited to three months and Notes to five. Pro costs $10 a month and includes 500 AI credits each month, cloud sync, dictation, custom themes, Translator, and unlimited Clipboard History and Notes. Raycast is available on macOS, Windows, iOS and iPadOS, but not Android. Its browser extension supports Chromium-based browsers, Safari and Firefox. Eligible new accounts can start a seven-day Pro trial; advanced AI models are excluded.