When comparing Spectacle vs Window Tidy, the Slant community recommends Spectacle for most people. In the question“What is the best window manager for Mac?” Spectacle is ranked 7th while Window Tidy is ranked 33rd. The most important reason people chose Spectacle is:
Spectacle is licensed under MIT with source code available on [GitHub](https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle).
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Pros
Pro Free and open source
Spectacle is licensed under MIT with source code available on GitHub.
Pro Simple hotkeys
Spectacle offers easy-to-remember preset hotkeys.
Pro Mouseless
All windows in Spectacle can be controlled with keyboard shortcuts, so no mouse is needed. This makes for a fast way to control windows.
Pro Great UX
Spectacle is easy to use and configure. It's plug and play.
Pro Low footprint
Spectacle only uses up 18-19 MB of RAM, which means there is not much overhead by using this app.
Pro Multi-monitor support
Pro 7+ years of use
Using it for 7 years
Pro Easy drag and drop interface
When you want to resize a window you just drag it on the screen and your configured workspaces appear immediately, semi-transparent. Then you just drag and drop your window above the configuration that you want to use.
Pro Allows multiple workspace configurations
Window Tidy facilitates not just window sizes, but windows that are precisely sized to fit together to fill up the screen.
Pro Fine tune window sizes
You can set up windows to fit as large or as small of an area on your screen as you would like. For example, if you want a 1/3 left, 1/3, center, 1/9 top right, 1/9 center right, and 1/9 bottom right, you can and it is easy to set up.
Cons
Con Not maintained
The software is free, but no longer seems to be maintained.
Con Impossible to add new functions
While keyboard shortcuts can be changed for the available actions, there is no way to add custom actions which in turn limits the functionality of the app.
Con Limited window sizing capabilities
You can use 1/2 of the screen vertically and horizontally (divide into 4 parts). You can also use the screen in thirds too, but only the left and right third: you can't use the 1/3 in the center. There is no way to do a more granular distribution.
Con Breaks on macOS High Sierra / Chrome or Firefox
Doesn't support side by side windows.
Con Doesn't work with any Adobe products
There are some apps like Adobe Reader that do not work with Spectacle. Basically, any app with a heavily customized UI that breaks OS X accessibility will not work correctly under Spectacle.
Con Doesn't work - has been abandoned
Con Workspaces don't show up when you drag a window
Workspaces will only appear on one desktop, but not the others.