Chome windows don't respond to ShiftIt commands

[zzyyfff]

Problem: ShiftIt work perfectly for all apps' windows except for "Google Chrome.app". Chrome windows just don't respond at all.

System: MacBook Pro 15" Late 2016 model with Touchbar macOS 10.14.3 ShiftIt 2.3 Google Chrome 72.0.3626.121

Attempts to solve:

• I've tried using both the hotkey activation and the SiftIt menu bar dropdown. Both work for other apps but not for Chrome.
• I've trying to find any hotkeys in Chrome that might be overriding ShiftIt, but haven't found any. Perhaps I don't know where to look.
• I've also tried searching online, both in these Github issues and generally across the internet, for anyone else with the same problem and found none.
• I tried using different combinations of external keyboard and monitor to no avail.

Thanks in advance for any help and thanks making for this awesome app! =)

[molenick]

I'm experiencing this as well, one additional observation I've seen is that Chrome will respond to Shift-It commands when initially launched, however after visiting any page it ceases to function. Started happening sometime around February 18th.

[molenick]

I just downgraded to Chrome 71.0.3578.80 and it seems to be working fine. I guess the question is what changed between 71 and 72 in Chrome that could break Shift-It?

[zzyyfff]

I can confirm that downgrading to Chrome 71 works for having ShiftIt work again!

It's not a good solution for me and probably not a good longterm solution for most other users because:

• it breaks other important software
• was rather involved to downgrade and figure out how to disable automatic updates, and
• presumably most ppl will want to use and develop for the Chrome version most others are using

I'm curious what changed, too! I'm not sure I know enough to further the investigation, but I'm happy to help/test things if anyone has suggestions!

[dladowitz]

Where did you download Chrome 71 from? I see a bunch of sites that list it, but I'm extremely wary of downloading a web browser from them. Who knows if they've tampered with the package and installed anything malicious.

[zzyyfff]

That's a fair concern! I don't remember which of several sites I ended up using, but I did it for testing only and reverted to the current release. I do not recommend this solution for many reasons (for me, it also broke use of the 1Password extension), unless you're only trying to test ShiftIt.

It appears that the maintainer(s) are abandoning this project and recommend using a configuration of Hammerspoon instead. I've implemented the Hammerspoon solution on my personal machine: it works great in all contexts and is more customizable!

I recommend this solution for replacing ShiftIt:

1. Install Hammerspoon: https://www.hammerspoon.org/
2. Add MiroWindowManager to Hammerspoon: https://github.com/miromannino/miro-windows-manager
3. Add this init.lua for Hammerspoon, which adds extra functions and gets rid of the default animation time: https://github.com/a7hybnj2/dotfiles/blob/master/.hammerspoon/init.lua

I also went inside of MiroWindowManager (Show Package Contents or use terminal) and changed its init.lua to add an extra window size to obj.sizes; 7/6 is useful for me! They're just inverted fractions of screen size, so that's six sevenths. Works better than ever!

I'll keep this issue Open so folks with the same problem can find this stable workaround that is also recommended by the main ShiftIt developer:

@derekwyatt - Hammerspoon is really cool. Do you think you could package a Hammerspoon script which basically does what shiftit does so it could become a permanent replacement?

Originally posted by @fikovnik in https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt/issues/296#issuecomment-438384503

[fikovnik]

Indeed, please use Hammerspoon!

[dennisgove]

I just installed Hammerspoon after years of using Shiftit and am very pleased.

That said, I loved shiftit and I'm sorry to see it go! Thank you for the suggestion to switch to Hammerspoon and THANK YOU for the use of shiftit over these last few years.