When comparing KWM vs Amethyst, the Slant community recommends Amethyst for most people. In the question“What is the best window manager for Mac?” Amethyst is ranked 5th while KWM is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Amethyst is:
Amethyst is published under the MIT license making it open-source and id offered completely free. This allows anyone to give the tiling window manger a try, which is great.
Specs
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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 It's free and open-source
Amethyst is published under the MIT license making it open-source and id offered completely free. This allows anyone to give the tiling window manger a try, which is great.
Pro Recently updated and rewritten in Swift.
The application was written in Objective-C, but was recently updated and completely rewritten in Apple's new native language Swift.
Pro Works with keyboard shortcuts, no mouse needed
As it's designed to work closely to how xmonad, Amethyst uses keyboard shortcuts to control the windows being used, meaning no mouse input is necessary. This can make for a faster way to control windows.
Pro Multi-monitor suppport
Pro Has many common layouts to choose from (fullscreen, floating, row, column, wide, etc)
Pro Can switch between tiling and floating mode
Pro Under active development
Pro Configured via UI
No CONFIG file provides security and will avoid making amethyst crash. Instead configured via simple UI
Pro True tiling means never losing track of windows under a huge pile of others
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 Can be buggy at times
Con There are more user friendly window managers available
There are certainly more user friendly window managers available for MacOS, such as Divvy or Moom. Amethyst, however, is more powerful and customizable than the more user friendly options available and therefore may be a better choice for a user looking for more advanced capabilities and customization.