🎛️ Performance Improvements and Auto Model
By Steven Van ·
Raycast 2.6 for Mac halves host memory use and adds Lightweight, Balanced and Flagship modes to the Auto AI model, with Flagship needing Pro+ or Max.
Raycast 2.6 for macOS cuts memory use across the app. The Raycast host process now uses about 50% less memory, and each extension process uses about 30% less memory at startup, with less CPU when launching. Raycast says this helps menu bar commands, background refreshes and AI tools. A memory leak that grew the longer Raycast stayed open is also fixed, and the vendor says further improvements are coming in the next updates.
The release also reworks the Auto model, which now has three preferences for how it picks a model:
- Balanced is the default and uses about 70% fewer credits than Flagship.
- Lightweight responds in about 70% less time than Flagship and suits quick questions.
- Flagship uses the most capable models for harder tasks and requires a Pro+ or Max subscription.
Other additions include Claude and ChatGPT subscription usage in /usage in AI Chat and in Settings AI, along with new Show AI Credits/Claude/ChatGPT Usage commands. Clipboard History gets a Paste as PNG action for TIFF images. Root Search adds direct results for more settings, including Accessibility and Keyboard Shortcuts, and the UI now adjusts colour contrast automatically to stay legible.
The changelog also lists a long run of fixes, many of them for keyboard shortcuts, Quicklinks and File Search. Among them, the file indexer uses about 60% less memory when it updates its index, and a crash that could occur when changing keyboard input sources is fixed.
