When comparing Default Folder X vs ShiftIt, the Slant community recommends Default Folder X for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?” Default Folder X is ranked 39th while ShiftIt is ranked 46th. The most important reason people chose Default Folder X is:
From the Open / Save file dialog, you can access your recent, favorite, and open folders. Includes a menubar item and can add to the Finder toolbar for quick access.
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Pros
Pro Directory assistant Finder Integration
From the Open / Save file dialog, you can access your recent, favorite, and open folders. Includes a menubar item and can add to the Finder toolbar for quick access.
Pro New features are intuitive
Many of the features provided by Default Folder are quite intuitive and quickly become very useful. When a save dialogue is open, just click on an open Finder window to change the current path to that directory. Integrated Quicklook previews make selecting files in the list view much easier, and Spotlight tags can be added directly from the save dialogue.
Pro Easy to configure
ShiftIt is configured through a simple UI where you simply press the hotkeys you wish to map to a certain action.
Pro Free
Pro Intuitive
ShiftIt is very straight-forward to use for most frequent usages.
Pro Open source
Pro Configuration can be committed to your personal dotfiles repository
Configuration winds up living in .hammerspoon/init.lua and .hammerspoon/Spoons/ShiftIt.lua. Very easy to track configuration changes.
Cons
Con A little slow
Similar to Spectacle, but it has a few more features, such as being able to pick the size adjustment increments. Spectacle was a little faster, though. Repeated size changes or moves in succession can cause it to wait for it to complete.
Con Imprecise when readjusting sizes
Con Doesn't support moving windows between workspaces
There's no way to move a window to a different workspace with hotkeys in ShiftIt.