When comparing ShiftIt vs nvALT, the Slant community recommends nvALT for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?” nvALT is ranked 33rd while ShiftIt is ranked 46th. The most important reason people chose nvALT is:
nvALT has a simple text box at the top (similar to that of a web browser) and when you start typing inside it, nvALT immediately displays a drop-down box of all the notes that contain the text you are searching for. The more you type, the more the search is narrowed down.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion 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 Powerful search syntax
nvALT has a simple text box at the top (similar to that of a web browser) and when you start typing inside it, nvALT immediately displays a drop-down box of all the notes that contain the text you are searching for. The more you type, the more the search is narrowed down.
Pro Lightweight
Pro Powerful note-taking features
nvALT is not only used for simple text editing but also as a powerful tool for taking notes, TODOs, phone numbers and every other piece of information that can be stored in a plain-text file.
This is because nvALT is not designed only as a tool to write text, but also as a powerful search and organize tool for plain-text files.
Pro Free

Pro MultiMarkdown 3 support
Has built-in support for MultiMarkdown 3.
Pro Right to Left support
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.
Con Not very powerful as far as text editing goes
nvALT's strength is its search feature. It has some basic text-editing features such as cut, paste, find-and-replace and so on. But it doesn't have any advanced text manipulation features available in other editors.
