When comparing Spectacle 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 34th while Spectacle is ranked 35th. 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 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 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 Free
Pro MultiMarkdown 3 support
Has built-in support for MultiMarkdown 3.
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 Right to Left support
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 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.