When comparing KWM 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 KWM is ranked 18th. 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 Works in the same way that Xmonad & i3 does for Linux
For those who would like the same tiling window management of Xmonad and i3.
Pro Runs in the background
The application runs in the background. There is no indication that it is running except the automatic tiling of the windows. There is no menu bar icon or icon in the dock.
Pro Windows respond very fast
Most users claim the tiling and splitting of the windows in KWM respond more quickly and more reliably than the only other known window manager of its type: Amethyst.
Pro Software is free and open source
Pro Highly configurable
Using the config file (kwmrc) you can configure a variety of options including Window spacing and padding, borders, hot-key commands, etc... There are those who would say that the possibilities are limitless.
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 No longer being developed
Sadly the developer has moved on to work on a different project (chunkwm), so there will be no more updates for KWM. However the code works well; no matter what version of macOS you are using.
Con Takes long to set up
You need to use the terminal and edit the configuration file in order to adjust it to the way you want. This might be a little confusing for basic users. But once you have it set, you can just copy the config file and use it on a multiple amount of machines.
Con You need HomeBrew to install it
Homebrew is required to install it. Takes more to get it work in the terminal to get it installed and working on your system.
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.