How to Customize Raycast on a Mac in 2026: Themes, Size, Layout

To customize how Raycast looks on a Mac, open Raycast Settings (Command-comma while Raycast is open, or type "Settings" in Root Search) and go to General. There you set Window Mode to Compact or Expanded, pick an Interface Size, choose a theme under Appearance, and change the Raycast Hotkey. Custom themes need Raycast Pro.

A launcher is the window you see more than any other on a Mac, many times a day, so small things about it start to grate: the glare of a light window at night, text that's a touch too small on a big monitor, a list of results you never use. Raycast was rebuilt for macOS Tahoe this year and moved a few settings around. This guide walks through every setting that changes how Raycast looks and behaves on screen, where each one lives in Raycast 2, and how to sort out the ones that won't stick.

Where each Raycast look setting lives

Most of Raycast's appearance settings sit on the General tab of Settings, with a few on the Launcher, Keyboard and Advanced tabs, according to Raycast's settings manual. Here's the map before the steps.

The plan column comes from Raycast's pricing page, which lists Custom Themes as included in Pro and not in Free. Pro is $10 a month, or $96 a year.

Which Raycast you have, and why the settings moved

Raycast 2 left beta on August 25, 2026, and its release notes say it replaces version 1. Raycast's download page lists macOS Tahoe and Apple silicon as requirements, and says anyone on macOS Sequoia or earlier has to upgrade macOS before installing it. So if your Mac has an Intel chip, or you haven't moved to Tahoe, the steps below may not match what you see.

The look itself changed a lot. Raycast's own announcement says "every pixel is new" and that the app was built to sit naturally inside macOS Tahoe, using Liquid Glass sparingly. The What's New in V2 page adds a simpler compact mode and a search box inside Settings that covers every extension, command and setting. Lost a setting from this guide? Open Settings and type its name into that box.

Raycast has kept tuning the design since. Version 2.4, on September 14, 2026, updated every interface for the newest macOS release.Version 2.6 added automatic color contrast adjustments so text stays legible. If Raycast looks slightly different from a screenshot you found online, that's usually why.

How to change the Raycast theme on a Mac

Raycast themes change the background, primary text and support colors of every Raycast window, and you switch them in Settings → General → Appearance or with the Switch Theme command, per Raycast's themes manual. By default Raycast follows your Mac's light or dark mode; turn that off to choose a theme yourself. Raycast's themes manual calls themes a Pro feature and its pricing page lists custom themes under Pro, so on the Free plan expect to keep the default look.

1. Open Raycast and press Command-comma, or type Settings in Root Search.
2. Click the General tab.
3. Under Appearance, turn off Follow System Appearance if you want one theme all the time.
4. Pick a theme from the installed list. It applies straight away.

The faster route is the Switch Theme command. Type "Switch Theme" in Root Search, arrow through the list and press Return on the one you want. It's quicker than clicking around in Settings, so it's where I try new themes before I commit to one.

Use one theme for light mode and another for dark

Raycast can hold a separate theme for each system appearance, so it changes with your Mac when macOS switches between light and dark. In Switch Theme, select a theme, press Command-K to open the Action Panel and choose Set as Light Theme or Set as Dark Theme. You can do the same from Settings → General → Appearance, per the themes manual. Leave Follow System Appearance on for this to work.

I run my Mac on automatic appearance, so it goes dark in the evening. A soft dark theme for night and the plain default for daytime means Raycast never flashes bright at me after sunset.

Build your own theme in Theme Studio

Theme Studio is Raycast's built-in theme editor, and it previews every color change live before you save. Open it from Settings → General → Appearance, then:

1. Start from a built-in theme, duplicate one you have, or start a new one.
2. Give it a name and set it as a Light or Dark theme.
3. Set the background, either a solid color or a gradient.
4. Set the primary and support colors with hex values or the color picker.
5. Save it. Right-click it in the sidebar to set it as your light or dark theme.

Picking brand colors taught me something: choose the background first and judge the text against it, not the other way round. A launcher is almost all text, so contrast matters more than how pretty the swatch looks. If you match Raycast to a company color for a team setup, check the result on both a laptop screen and an external monitor, because the same hex can read very differently.

Install or share a community theme

Raycast's Theme Explorer at ray.so/themes lists themes other people have made, with light and dark previews. Open one and click Add to Raycast to install it. To share your own, right-click it in the Theme Studio sidebar and choose Copy as URL for a link, or Copy as JSON for the raw theme data, per the themes manual.

How to turn on compact mode in Raycast

Compact mode strips the Raycast window back to the essentials, and the switch for it is Settings → General → Window Mode → Compact. Raycast has offered a version of it since its 2022 redesign, and the What's New in V2 page describes the current one as simpler and easier to scan at a glance.

1. Open Raycast Settings and click General.
2. Set Window Mode to Compact. Choose Expanded to go back.
3. Optional: turn on Show Favorites in Compact Mode to keep your favorite commands as a row of icons in the small window.

On my MacBook I keep compact mode on, because most of what I do in Raycast is type three letters and press Return. On a big desk monitor I switch to Expanded, where there's room to browse. The favorites row is what makes compact mode work for me: the handful of things I open most are one arrow key away.

Raycast has smoothed compact mode's rough edges this fall. Version 2.6 made the window expand when a command needs an argument you haven't typed yet, and later releases fixed aliases and the missing in-window messages (toasts) in compact mode, according to Raycast's changelog. If compact mode misbehaved for you in the beta, it's worth another try.

How to make Raycast's text and window bigger

Raycast's Interface Size setting scales every Raycast window, with three steps: Default, Large and Larger, chosen with the Aa buttons in Settings → General. Text, buttons and fields all grow together, and the windows resize to match, per the settings manual.

It also reaches into Notes and AI Chat. Raycast's notes for the release that added it say that when a window's content zoom is smaller than the new interface size, it grows to match, and you can still set those zoom levels separately afterward. If you only want bigger text in a note, change that note's zoom and leave the interface alone.

When I share my screen in a meeting, I bump Interface Size to Large first. People on the other end watch a compressed video, and Default-size text in a launcher turns to mush at that resolution.

How to change the Raycast hotkey, or give it Command-Space

The Raycast Hotkey in Settings → General sets the shortcut that opens Raycast from anywhere, and Raycast's settings manual gives Option-Space as the Mac default. Click the field, press the combination you want, and it saves.

Many people want Command-Space, which macOS gives to Spotlight. Free it up in macOS first, then assign it to Raycast:

1. Choose Apple menu → System Settings, then click Keyboard in the sidebar.
2. Click Keyboard Shortcuts, then select Spotlight in the sidebar.
3. Double-click the Spotlight shortcut and press a different combination, per Apple's guide to conflicting shortcuts.
4. Back in Raycast, open Settings → General, click Raycast Hotkey and press Command-Space.

You can give single commands their own hotkeys too. Select a command in Root Search, press Shift-Command-comma (or Command-K, then Configure Command), choose Set Hotkey and press the keys. Settings → Shortcuts lists every alias and hotkey in one place, per Raycast's aliases and hotkeys manual. Our Mac keyboard shortcuts guide covers which combinations macOS already uses, so you don't pick one that clashes.

Choose where the Raycast window opens and how it resets

Raycast decides which display to appear on with Show Raycast on in Settings → Launcher: Screen containing mouse, Screen with active window or Primary screen. With two monitors, "screen with active window" keeps Raycast next to whatever you're typing in, which is usually where your eyes are.

Three more settings shape how the window feels, all from the settings manual:

• Pop to Root Search (Launcher tab) sets how long Raycast remembers where you were before it resets to the main search, from Immediately up to 180 seconds.
• Window Activation Behavior (Advanced tab) chooses whether Raycast moves to the Space you're on or switches you to its Space. I find Move to Active Space the less jarring of the two when I work in full-screen apps.
• Escape Key Behavior (Keyboard tab) sets whether Esc goes back a step or closes the window.

Tidy what shows up in Root Search

A cleaner Root Search does more for how Raycast feels than any theme, because every search starts there. These are the controls, with the shortcuts from Raycast's keyboard shortcuts page:

• Favorites: select an item and press Command-F to pin it above the results. Reorder with Shift-Command-Up Arrow or Down Arrow.
• Disable a command you never use with Shift-Command-D, so it stops showing up in results.
• Aliases: a short keyword that opens a command exactly, set from Configure Command → Set Alias. Matching is strict, not fuzzy, so type the alias exactly.
• Root Search Sensitivity (Settings → Launcher): Low shows more results, High shows fewer, closer matches.
• Favicon Provider (Settings → Advanced): choose DuckDuckGo, Google, Raycast (the default) or None to drop the website icons beside links and Quicklinks.

My favorites are the commands I'd otherwise type every hour, and anything I haven't touched in a month gets disabled. A short list I trust beats a long one I have to read. If Raycast Notes is one of them, our Raycast Notes guide covers its own hotkey and window.

Two grids got their own control in Raycast 2: Emoji & Symbols and Screenshots let you choose how many columns you see, per the What's New in V2 page.

Show or hide Raycast in the menu bar

Raycast's menu bar icon is controlled by Show in Menu Bar in Settings → General, and on macOS 26 Tahoe it also needs Allow in the Menu Bar turned on for Raycast in System Settings → Menu Bar, per the settings manual. If the switch in Raycast is on and the icon still isn't there, the macOS setting is almost always the reason.

Raycast still looks wrong? Quick fixes

A Raycast look setup worth copying

If you want a sensible starting point rather than an afternoon of fiddling, this is roughly how I set up a new Mac:

1. Hotkey first: move Spotlight off Command-Space and give it to Raycast.
2. Window Mode on Compact, with Show Favorites in Compact Mode on.
3. Five or six favorites, nothing more.
4. Follow System Appearance on, with a light theme and a dark theme that suit each other.
5. Show Raycast on set to Screen with active window.
6. Interface Size on Default, and Large before any screen share.

If you're still weighing whether Raycast is the right launcher at all, our Raycast alternatives page compares it with Spotlight, Alfred and others, and Raycast AI pricing explains what the paid plans add beyond themes.