When comparing AROW vs ShiftIt, the Slant community recommends ShiftIt for most people. In the question“What is the best window manager for Mac?” ShiftIt is ranked 2nd while AROW is ranked 22nd. 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.
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Pros
Pro Support for multiple monitors
If you use external monitors, the app is useful. It also supports retina screen without problems.
Pro Customizable options
You can customize the app in Option, for example, where you can change the appearance of the preview outline, adjust the width of the recognition areas, and set keyboard hotkeys for quick window snapping.
Pro Define OS X window buttons
AROW enables you to change the actions of OS X’s window buttons. It only requires either a right or a left-click for the action to take place.
Pro Smart Panel to move and resize windows
The customizable grid panel is very intuitive and is an accurate way to resize and move windows. Simply drag your mouse across its grid, the window will be moved, and resize to the exact position instantly.
Pro Easy ways to snap windows
Simply drag windows to the edges of your Mac’s screen. Once the cursor reaches the screen’s edge, the window will automatically move and resize to fill exactly half or quarter of the screen.
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 Trouble with GUI
Yosemite (10.10.5) it works but it's impossible to open the application GUI.
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.