When comparing Notational Velocity vs Hammerspoon, the Slant community recommends Notational Velocity for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?” Notational Velocity is ranked 11th while Hammerspoon is ranked 38th. The most important reason people chose Notational Velocity is:
The interface is clean and unobtrusive.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Simple and minimalistic
The interface is clean and unobtrusive.
Pro Free
Pro Syncs with SimpleNotes or Dropbox
Pro 1512 issues are closed in the download page in GitHub
https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon/issues
They do fix issues that come from the community.
Pro Deeply customizable
Hammerspoon's Lua scripting and broad API allows you to perform any action you can imagine on your mac. It hooks into many OS APIs directly and has some high-level APIs to manipulate things like Spotify or iTunes. See the full list here.
Pro Automate actions based on the operating system
Hammerspoon lets you hook into OS level events and trigger any action you can imagine. From setting up a simple keyboard shortcut to launching a complex workflow using multiple apps and scripts.
Cons
Con Feels a bit outdated
The last release was from 2011. Although due to its brilliant simplicity in doing what it's designed for, some might think there hasn't been any need for an update, as long as it still works with the newer OSs.
Con Has 324 issues on their download page in GitHub
https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon/issues
I can not list all the issues.
Con Some knowledge of programming required
Hammerspoon is scripted in the Lua programming language, and some familiarity with programming in general will be needed to use it. Some plugins exist that can be used by adding some files to a specific folder, but this will not give the flexibility that is so key to Hammerspoon