Installing extensions
Three routes in, the registries behind them, and when you need a toolchain.
Settings → Extensions → Install offers three routes.
Search Registries
Searches every enabled registry and installs from any of them. This is the normal route.
Import from Raycast
Copies extensions you already have out of a local Raycast install.
Nothing is compiled. No Node, no package manager and no network are involved — the bundles are already built.
Both channels are scanned (~/.config/raycast and ~/.config/raycast-x), and an extension present
in both is offered once. There is an Import All, and the pane rescans whenever you open it and
tells you when Raycast has something Tinycast does not.
Add Folder
Point at any directory containing a manifest and built command files — a project you have just built locally, for instance.
Only package.json, the built commands and assets/ are copied. Never node_modules, never source
maps.
Registries
Two ship enabled, and you can add your own.
| Raycast Store | A GitHub repository | |
|---|---|---|
| Serves | An already-built bundle | Source |
| Needs | Nothing | Node, and a package manager |
The store is the reason most people need no toolchain at all. It serves what was already built.
A GitHub registry is any repo laid out with one folder per extension. Add one with owner/repo or a
link to the folder. Only the extension's own folder is ever fetched, never the whole repo.
Source installs run <package manager> install --ignore-scripts and then build.
Lifecycle scripts are skipped on purpose. An extension that does not compile fails at the build
step rather than silently installing broken.
Package managers
Settings → Extensions → Package manager
Automatic (default) takes the first of pnpm → Bun → Yarn → npm that is installed. The order puts the fastest and most disk-frugal first, with npm last as the one that is always there.
Because a GUI app inherits no login-shell PATH, Tinycast looks in known locations itself: Homebrew,
Volta, asdf, mise, fnm, nvm and Yarn. The pane shows what it found — "Found pnpm at
/opt/homebrew/bin/pnpm" — or tells you nothing is installed.
Custom search paths
For anything outside that list — Nix, in particular — the Registries sheet has Custom search
paths: a colon-separated list, like PATH, checked before the built-in locations.
~/.local/share/mise/shims/etc/profiles/per-user/you/home-path/binSet once, applied to every future install.
What is not backed up
Three things are deliberately excluded from settings backups, because they describe this machine:
- The registry list
- The package manager choice
- Custom search paths
Storage
Everything lives under Tinycast's Application Support folder, and uninstalling an extension removes all of it: the extension itself, its local storage and cache, its preferences, its support folder, its icon override, its command shortcuts, favorites and learned ranking.
Settings → Extensions → Storage measures leftover build workspaces — the kind a crashed install can leave — and offers to clean them up. It sits outside the enabled group deliberately, and is empty in normal use.
Nothing ever touches your own ~/Library/pnpm or ~/.npm.