Vicinae

Vicinae is a keyboard-driven command launcher for Linux, inspired by Raycast. It puts common actions within keyboard reach: launching apps, switching windows, managing clipboard history, searching files, and more.

Getting started

Install Vicinae and then follow the quickstart guide for your environment. If you want to learn a bit more about Vicinae, continue reading.

Philosophy

Vicinae aims to be a shortcut for most simple actions on your system. It ships with a broad feature set and integrates seamlessly with native OS features like window management and clipboard. With minimal configuration, it works as a clipboard manager, window switcher, app launcher, calculator, web searcher, and more.

For anything too niche for the core, Vicinae can be extended via dmenu mode, script commands, or full extensions built with React and TypeScript.

Extensions made by the community can be installed from vicinae itself in a few clicks.

Performance

Vicinae is built with performance in mind. When given the choice, vicinae will prefer to cache things in memory to lower CPU usage in order to keep battery drain minimal and remain snappy. The amount of memory vicinae really needs to function properly is generally lower than what most process monitors report. Read more.

Raycast compatibility

One of Vicinae's flagship features is its compatibility with the Raycast ecosystem. Currently Vicinae has decent support for many Raycast extensions. Your mileage will vary depending on the extension, but simpler ones work well. Vicinae also implements script commands that mimic most of the Raycast feature of the same name.

The design is similar, but Vicinae does some things differently and unlocks things that Raycast locks behind a paywall, such as theming and window management APIs.