When comparing ShiftIt vs Magnet, the Slant community recommends ShiftIt for most people. In the question“What is the best window manager for Mac?” ShiftIt is ranked 4th while Magnet is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose ShiftIt is:
ShiftIt is configured through a simple UI where you simply press the hotkeys you wish to map to a certain action.
Question Ranking
Pros
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 Open source
Pro Intuitive
ShiftIt is very straight-forward to use for most frequent usages.
Pro Intuitive handling
Just drag the window to one of the sides of the screen and it snaps there. This is especially useful for those who can't be bothered remembering the shortcuts.
Pro Up to six external displays supported
Pro Cheap
At $5.00, it is not that expensive.
Pro It's often on sale
For example, at the writing of this pro it's currently at $1.
Cons
Con Doesn't support moving windows between workspaces
There's no way to move a window to a different workspace with hotkeys in ShiftIt.
Con Can't hide the menu bar icon
It would've been nice to be able to hide the icon so it doesn't clutter the menu bar.
Con Limited availability
Magnet is only available in App Store.
Con Interference when switching between folders
Default Folder-X app "warns" that Magnet App may interfere with it's ability to switch between folders in Open and Save dialogue boxes.
Con Causes cursor bugs in IntelliJ IDEs
Unfortunately, Magnet causes the caret to bounce around in IntelliJ IDEs, this is very annoying.