When comparing Homebrew vs Moom, the Slant community recommends Homebrew for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?” Homebrew is ranked 2nd while Moom is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose Homebrew is:
Homebrew makes it easy for people to quickly install any open source software (that is contained within the apps repositories) for Mac.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Quick access to a large repository of open source software
Homebrew makes it easy for people to quickly install any open source software (that is contained within the apps repositories) for Mac.
Pro Easy to setup and use
Once installed, you control Homebrew using the brew command. You can find packages using brew search, install them using brew install and remove them using brew uninstall.
Pro Open Source
Pro Less maintenance than Macports
Macports seems to be able to get into a bad state where new packages are unable to be installed, or installed software was unable to be updated. This simply hasn't happened with Homebrew. In addition to not having to deal with corruption problems, Homebrew installs packages in userland. Not requiring root to install software is a big win.
Pro Builds quickly and requires few dependencies
Homebrew as much as possible uses already existing libraries and tools to install software thus making builds quick and requiring few dependencies.
Pro Unintrusive
Homebrew installs packages to their own directory and then symlinks their files into /usr/local
. Homebrew won’t install files outside its prefix, and you can place a Homebrew installation wherever you like.
Pro Does not require using sudo
One of the things to like about Homebrew is that it refuses to run things under sudo
most of the time. This is a great policy, but it causes issues when you want to create symlinks or install in places that SIP has changed permissions on.
Pro Homebrew tries very hard to use existing tools and libraries
Homebrew’s recipes try very hard to use the existing tools and libraries in OS/X, so they tend to build much faster and require fewer dependent libraries.
Pro Customizable keyboard shortucts
Moom comes with many preset keyboard shortcuts. The user can go into the graphical settings of the app and change any one of them to a different combination of keys.
Pro You can save tiling window position and size
Users can set window position and size themselves, allowing for a great way to set up a tiling window experience.
Pro Windows can be snapped to the edges of the screen
In addition to using the grid or the overlay, Moom can move and zoom windows by dragging them to screen edges.
Pro Simple customization
While you can set keyboard shortcuts, Moom has a very easy-to-use GUI and GUI-based customization features to help you get going right away.
Pro Adds a zoom button for all apps
Moom adds an overlay zoom button to the corner of all apps which allows any app to go full screen or be placed to certain sections of the screen (such as the top, bottom, or sides). This works even on apps that do not normally allow for full screen views.
Pro Multi-monitor support
Moom has excellent support for multi-monitor setups. You can drag a window to the edge of your screen into another monitor and snap it there.
Cons
Con May cause issues when trying to create symlinks or installing in places where SIP has changed permissions
One of the things to like about Homebrew is that it refuses to run things under sudo
most of the time. This is a great policy, but it causes issues when you want to create symlinks or install in places that SIP has changed permissions on. (Alternatively, you could install Homebrew somewhere other than /usr/local
, but that might break various packages that depend on having stuff in and relative to /usr/local/
.)
Con Command line tools for XCode required
Once xcode is installed you can install Homebrew, including new(er)/different versions of most of the build stuff that xcode-select installed, like a newer gcc, newer git, etc.
Con Relies on outdated system libs
Con UI for settings can be confusing
The settings for the app are pretty jumbled and are hard to get a grip of, especially for first time users. While all the settings one would need are there, they are difficult to find or understand, which requires a good bit of playing around with the settings in order to get a feel for them and what they offer.
Con Not free
Moom is not free: it costs $9.99.
Con Non customisable popover
The pop over is not customisable and has two presets which are odd for instance two presents are two split windows horizontally.
Con Two steps needed, while some tools only need one
