Watch always-on apps and relaunch any that aren't running, on a background interval.
Menu-bar utilities, chat clients, and sync agents occasionally crash or get quit by accident. Keep Alive uses Raycast's native background refresh to check on the apps you choose and quietly relaunch anything that has stopped — no launchd daemons, no monitoring tools, near-zero cost.
Pick which installed apps to watch, with the same feel as Raycast's built-in app pickers.
- ⏎ — watch / stop watching the selected app
- ⌘⇧M — toggle relaunch mode between Background (relaunch without stealing focus, the default) and Foreground (activate the app)
- Watched apps that have been uninstalled are flagged and can be removed
Runs automatically on your chosen interval, and can also be run manually from root search as an instant "check now".
- Relaunches any watched app that isn't running, in its configured mode
- Posts one macOS notification naming what was relaunched — total silence when everything is healthy
- Check Every preference: 1, 3, 5, 10 (default), 30, or 60 minutes
- Install the extension and open Manage Watched Apps to pick your apps.
- Run Check Watched Apps once and allow Background Refresh when Raycast asks (or enable it in the command's settings).
- Optionally set Check Every in the command's preferences.
Worst-case downtime for a watched app is one interval.
Each cycle is one ps -xo comm= call — a single subprocess regardless of how many apps you watch — matched against your watchlist by bundle path, then /usr/bin/open for anything missing (-g keeps background relaunches out of your way). A 30-app check measures ~13 ms; see EFFICIENCY.md for the numbers. An empty watchlist exits before doing any work at all.