Here’s the Deal

Hammerspoon vs TextWrangler

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When comparing Hammerspoon vs TextWrangler, the Slant community recommends Hammerspoon for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?” Hammerspoon is ranked 38th while TextWrangler is ranked 65th. The most important reason people chose Hammerspoon is:

https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon/issues They do fix issues that come from the community.

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best power user tools for macOS?

Pros

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.

Pro
Fast to start up

It starts up fast because is not bloated. It has all the essentials of a text editor.

Pro
Free

Free but capable alternative to BBEdit.

Pro
Built-in FTP/STFP browser

Edit remote files easily.

Pro
Robust

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Cons

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

Con
No Longer Maintained

Bare Bones, the developers of TextWranger, recently ended maintenance and support for the product. Per the Bare Bones website (https://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/): "We have sunsetted TextWrangler, and we encourage anyone interested in TextWrangler to download and use BBEdit instead."

Con
Not Compatible with macOS High Sierra (10.13+)

Per the Bare Bones website (https://www.barebones.com/support/new-os.html): "TextWrangler is not compatible with High Sierra. We suggest that you use BBEdit as an alternative . . . ." Since Bare Bones officially sunsetted the product, it will unlikely be compatible with subsequent macOS release versions either.