Release Notes

New

Text Editing with external editors. When looking at a diff, how often have you wanted to edit either side of the comparison? Kaleidoscope now enables you to do just that, with a single click. But instead of providing you with a limited editing experience inside Kaleidoscope, editing happens in your preferred environment: your IDE or Text Editor. As soon as you made your edit and saved your changes, Kaleidoscope will automatically refresh the diff. The following editors are supported:

App	Open in Project	Locate Line	Locate Column	Select Text
BBEdit	–	✔️	✔️	–
CotEditor	–	✔️	✔️	–
Cursor	✔️	✔️	✔️	–
Nova	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
SubEthaEdit	–	✔️	✔️	✔️
Sublime Text	✔️	✔️	✔️	–
TextEdit	–	–	–	–
VSCode	✔️	✔️	✔️	–
Xcode	✔️	✔️	–	–
Zed	✔️	✔️	✔️	–

Raycast Integration. An extension for the popular launcher app Raycast offers several commands to quickly open content from Raycast in Kaleidoscope. See the Extension Page and the Kaleidoscope Integration window for details.
Basic Integration with the Jujutsu (jj) version control system.
- Jujutsu is listed in the Integration window with information how to set up Kaleidoscope as diff and merge tool with jj.
- Changesets opened through jj diff or jj interdiff now show a bit more context.

Enhancements

In addition to the new General Setting to keep the Welcome Window open when opening a document, there's now a temporary power user override: hold down the ⌥ (option) key while opening a document (throgh any means) to invert the behavior specified in Settings. When the Setting is to generally not keep the Welcome Window open, but for one time you want to have it stay when re-opening a recent changeset in a repository, hold down ⌥ while double-clicking the row in the Repository view. You will also find a few new context menu entries explicitly offering that option.
The BBEdit Integration has been updated to also find the Scripts folder in Library/Containers.
Usability Improvements in the Services and Sharing Extension Integration sections.
Smaller improvements and fixes to the new Settings window.

Bugfixes

The Kaleidoscope Prism start setting was not always correctly honored.

Bugfixes

Implements a workaround to make buttons work in the Welcome Window when running macOS Tahoe Developer Beta.

Enhancements

The previous solution for comparing Pages documents no longer works with current versions of Pages. We’ve developed a new workflow, documented it on our blog, and updated in-app wording accordingly.

Bugfixes

The "X Unchanged Lines" in collapsed areas would be hard to read in Dark Appearance.
When editing Folder Ignore Patterns you could end up with duplicate patterns.
In certain situations, Folder Ignore Patterns would not be saved.
When launching Kaleidoscope through a service and opening content, the Welcome Window would remain open, even when if it wasn't configured to stay open.

New

Collapsing of Unchanged Lines (Folding)
- Equal (unchanged) line ranges in comparisons can now be collapsed, either by default or on demand. See a new Setting in Settings > Text.
- Use either View > Collapse Unchanged Lines from the menu or the new toolbar button to collapse/expand unchanged lines.
- A single collapsed area can also be expanded to reveal its content when needed to better understand the change context. Click the button in the collapsed area to expand.
- All collapsed areas can also be expanded by holding ⌥ (option) while clicking the button in one collapsed area.
- We've been working on this feature for a while now, not an easy one to get right. Try it out and let us know how you like it. Reach out via Help > Contact Support… from the menu.
New Settings Window. The Settings window has been completely reorganized to make it easier to find the settings you are looking for. You'll also find a few new features along the way.
- In General, there's a new option to overeride the Appearance of Kaleidoscope app. Some people love having macOS in Light but Kaleidoscope in Dark Appearance.
- In a similar fashion, you can now override the default Window Tabbing behavior of Kaleidoscope to prefer tabs even when macOS is set to not use them by default.
- There is a new Git tab gathering all settings related to the Git Integration, including a new option to disable the Git Integration entirely.
- In Text, we added a few more default monospaced fonts available on the Mac.
- In Images, we freshened up the color options.
- Folders has a major feature change for Ignore Patterns. Instead of matching item names, the patterns now match entire paths. This means you can now ignore specific subfolders, like all build or node_modules folders. As a side-effect, your previously created custom patterns have to be recreated.
- There's a new Files tab, with two rather advanced options:
  1. Some users are comparing files with extensions like .fpx, which are in fact text files, but recognized as image files by macOS. You may now enter file extensions to instruct Kaleidoscope to override macOS and instead inspect the content of those files to determine the file type.
  2. macOS may not know what to do with certain files. Kaleidoscope will by default not open those files. You can now have Kaleidoscope try to read those files as text. This may lead to unexpected results, but can also help to compare even certain binary files.
  Both of these options should only be used if you know what you are doing.
- The new Privacy tab allows you to see and control which kinds of data Kaleidoscope shares with other services, such as our crash reporting.

Enhancements

Dramatic performance increase of the Repository Commit List when there are lots of branches and tags in a repository.

Bugfixes

The Date Modified and Size columns will no longer "get lost" in Folder Comparisons.
.jsx files are now being recognized as JavaScript.
Many other improvements and bugfixes.

Enhancements

Syntax Highlighting for .liquid (Shopify) and .handlebars templates.
Newer version of the Syntax Highlighting engine.
Software Update Settings can now also be accessed from their previous location in the Settings window.

Bugfixes

Several smaller improvements and bugfixes.

Enhancements

Add a new setting to show the Welcome window when a Software Update becomes available. Perfect for users who mainly use Kaleidoscope with ksdiff.

Bugfixes

Navigating resolved conflicts with Wrap Around turned off would freeze the app.
Other minor bug fixes.

New

Software Update for Kaleidoscope has been completely re-imagined with the goal to reduce interruptions of your work while at the same time keeping you informed and in full control.
- There are no more superfluous alerts or notifications. Everything happens in the Welcome Window.
- Software Update Settings have been moved into the Welcome Window.
- Updates can be set to install automatically.
- Updates will be installed on quit by default.
Support for the powerful Kitty Terminal app.

Enhancements

The Xcode Debugger Integration has been greatly improved! If you haven't tried it before, now it's time to do so. If you have used it before, note these changes and improvements:
- The ksp command has been renamed to ksdiff for consistency. Note that lldb also accepts ksd as a shortcut. As before, this command sends the result of the lldb expression you provide to Kaleidoscope for inspection and diffing.
- The kspo command does something similar, but sends an object description to Kaleidoscope. It helps with visual comparisons by automatically creating images from certain objct types it knows. In addition to UIView, UIWindow, UIImage, NSWindow, NSView, and NSImage, it now also converts CGImageRef, CIImage, and NSBitmapImageRep. Some of those have been fixed in the current version.
- Kaleidoscope will show the output of those commands in one window per kind (text or image) and per target being debugged in Xcode.
The kaleidoscope: URL scheme now also accepts folder paths as input, allowing to open a folder comparison using a single URL.

Bugfixes

Folders in the path bar were lacking their menus.
The Open Changeset button in the new Lookup Commit window would sometimes not work.
Dropping multiple files from the Xcode Navigator sidebar onto Kaleidoscope Prism would only open one file.
Various other fixes.

Enhancements

Merge > New Merge from Comparison can now also be used in a Changeset.

Bugfixes

When showing the Welcome window with a repository selected that could no longer be resolved, the app would hang. This means the app could hang on start.
Saving the output file in a Merge would sometimes not work, prompting an alert when trying to close the document.
Opening images would show them at a wrong position and/or zoom level.
Various other fixes.

New Features

Support for the Prompt Terminal app by Panic.

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.3 would crash on app start for some users.
Fix a regression where opening a diff from Tower with the Perform directory diff option would no longer work.
A few other smaller fixes and improvements.

New Features

List of recent commits. The details section of a repository now shows a list of commits with immediate access to details and changesets. You can select the branch to be displayed, filter/search the list to your liking, and more.
Compare any reference or commit with the current (staged) working copy. Use the toolbar button in the repository details to show the Custom Comparisons popover.
New Lookup Commit window, see the Window menu. Comes with shortcut ⌃⌘L. This is quite useful to quickly see what a commit is all about, and to open a changeset from there.
The currently compared items now have entries in the File menu. Each has a submenu with useful commands otherwise only found in the File Shelf, Path Bar, or various contextual menus. There was also an effort to unify all options in all (contextual) menus across the app.
Support for the Ghostty Terminal app.

Enhancements

Added toolbar buttons to open the working copy folder of a repository in Finder or the selected Terminal app.
When performing a merge command while editing the merged text, the cursor is now automatically placed at the end of that merge command edit, streamlining the process of making further adjustments.
The various menus for picking branches can now be filtered by just starting to type a filter string.
The Folder Comparison now has an additional Expand All Folders command, located in the View menu and the bottom toolbar.
Content arriving from other apps, services, ksdiff, … is now labeled according to its origin, making it easier to identify. Use Save as… from the new File menu entries to persist that content to disk.
Header rows in the changeset sidebar now have a contextual menu, with options to show the folder in the Finder or the selected Terminal app.
Files and folders in the Path Bar should have more adequate icons.
You can now turn off the the rectangle indicating the size of the other image when comparing images with different sizes.

Bugfixes

The keyboard shortcut ⌘A would not work in the search bar.
The keyboard shortcuts ⌘+ and ⌘- would not work with single text views (files added or removed in a changeset).
In rare conditions, a merge window could end up with enormous width.
When opening changesets based on specific commits from within Kaleidoscope, those are no longer being added to recent documents, in order to keep the recents list clean.
Includes a new version of the underlying git library for improved performance and fidelity.

Enhancements

Syntax Highlighting for .4dm (4D Method) files, and .vue (VueJS) files will be highlighted as HTML.
In a Folder Comparison, even equal files can now be copied from one side to the other. This can be useful to ensure equal metadata.
New options to override system tabbing behavior and the number of recent documents, if needed.

Bugfixes

When using Merge > New Merge from Comparison, Kaleidoscope would delete the comparison files in certain circumstances.
Opening multiple diffs at the same time in Sourcetree now works as expected.
Window tabbing behavior (Prefer tabs when opening documents setting) always behaves as set in System Settings.
Fixed a potential crash in the Repository view.
The state of the File Shelf toolbar button would sometimes get confused on macOS Sequoia.
Improvements related to crash and error reporting.

Showing the changes between Base and B in context of a merge conflict

New Features

Base File when merging! When trying to resolve a git conflict, typically happening during a branch merge, it may sometimes be very helpful to see what the common base of both A and B was. Kaleidoscope now offers to show that, neatly placed in a popover near the conflict you are trying to resolve. And it's Kaleidoscope, so you're not just seeing the base file but a comparison between Base and A or B. Look for new buttons in the bottom toolbar and menu commands in the View menu.
Kaleidoscope and ksdiff now work as expected with files opened from /tmp (/private/tmp). Note that files living in temporary directories of other apps (/var/folders or Data/tmp inside Containers of sandboxed apps) are still not modifiable.

Enhancements

More consistent navigation when merging. This is a change from previous behavior. When working to resolve conflicts in a text merge, the main navigation commands in the Navigate menu are now Next Conflict and Previous Conflict, along with the familiar keyboard shortcuts ⌘↓ and ⌘↑. Also, when scrolling (or 3-finger swiping) the text views, only conflicts are being highlighted. Deletions, additions, and changes will not be highlighted. The alternative behavior to focus on all changes is available when holding ⌥ for any of those methods, e.g., Next Change is ⌥⌘↓, and so on. The same behavior applies to the navigation buttons in the bottom right of the window.
More consistent keyboard interaction when merging. Another change from previous behavior, with the intention to enable merging entirely using the keyboard. In a merge, you now need to use the more complicated ⌃⌘→ and ⌃⌘← For Merge > Choose A and Choose B (combined with ⌥ for the alternate Choose Both actions). This means that the common macOS text editing shortcuts ⌘→ and ⌘← (also with added ⇧) now work as expected when editing the merge document. Along with that, the insertion pointer is now placed at the end of the merged text after a merge operation, enabling you to immediately further modify the text if needed.
The Git File History, when shown for two specific commits, now always shows entries for both of those commits, even when they are logically not part of that history. This may happen for two reasons, both of which are indicated by a special icon for the entry:
1. The commit exists as part of the history, but the file shown was not touched by that commit. Yeah, git is not always easy to grasp, but that can (and likely will) happen.
2. The commit exists as part of the history of a different reference (fancy git word for a branch). Note that the File History shows one reference, usually your current HEAD. If you are unaware, that can be changed in the lower right or via the Navigate menu.
On the topic of git being complex: a commit can have multiple parent commits. In such cases, Kaleidoscope now offers to open Changesets to each of those parent commits.
Improved performance related to many git operations.

Bugfixes

The entire Git Integration would just not work for a few users. Thanks Joseph for helping us to find the cause!
The Context Shelf layout for Image conflicts was quite unusable.
Many other smaller improvement and fixes, as usual.

Bugfixes

Fix a recent regression where changing the View mode in changesets would not work.
Removed a workaround for a bug in macOS Sequoia beta that has been fixed for the final release.
Smaller fixes and optimizations.

Enhancements

The File Properties now explicitly show if a UTF-8 encoded file contains a BOM, as this causes a 3 byte file size increase. This may explain why files with equal content have different file size.
Add two new Text Filters Reduce Empty Lines and Remove Empty Lines to ease comparing text with varying amounts of newline characters.
Includes an Internet Access Policy that helps firewall apps like Little Snitch explain why certain network requests are being made by Kaleidoscope.

Bugfixes

Fixed a regression in Kaleidoscope 5.1 that caused the File Properties to be disabled.

New Features

kaleidoscope:// URL scheme. You can now add content to Kaleidoscope by clicking a URL, e.g., kaleidoscope://compare?~/Documents/Draft1.txt&~/Documents/Draft2.txt&label=My%20Drafts in apps that support that. See an article on our blog or the built-in help for supported commands, use cases, and exact syntax.

Enhancements

Many commands for Changeset and File History have been added to the menu bar, along with some default keyboard shortcuts for quick access. If you want to define your own shortcuts, use System Settings for that (see our blog post on the topic).

Bugfixes

Fixed a sporadic crash when reloading the File History.
Worked around a bug in macOS Sequoia beta (already fixed in the latest betas) that caused data in tables to not update in all previous versions of Kaleidoscope.
More fixes related to macOS Sequoia.
When no git binary is installed, Kaleidoscope will now trigger the macOS default installation procedure.
Smaller refinements.

Bugfixes

Certain functionalities like navigating changes would sometimes no longer work after selecting a file in a changeset.

Warning

On macOS Sequoia Beta 4, the Git File History does not show the correct state. We are investigating whether we can provide a workaround. On non-beta macOS versions, everything works as expected.

Enhancements

The File History is now being loaded progressively from Git, substantially reducing the initial wait time for complex repositories.
Opening a Kaleidoscope merge through git mergetool is much faster now.
When using Quick Look in the Folder Comparison, the Quick Look panel will now update as you change the selection. Thanks Max!

Bugfixes

Switching between image files in a changeset while using the Two-Up view would sometimes cause a distracting flash. This was a fun one to find and fix. As a bonus, switching between files in a changeset now has a short content animation.
Modifying Ignore Patterns in Settings > Folder would have no effect while the app was running.
The Recent Document entry for changesets would not always update correctly when reopening the document.
Fixed a case where the File History could close unexpectedly.
Finally found the cause for a very rare and rather random crash.
Fixed another rare crash in the detail view of a repository.
A few smaller optimizations and fixes along the way.

Enhancements

In the Custom Comparisons section of the Repository view, branches now update automatically as branches change in the repository.
Also in the Custom Comparisons section of the Repository view, added the ability to compare remote branches. Note that these are still local copies being compared, but they can still very useful, e.g., to compare what you haven't pushed yet.

Bugfixes

Major stability improvements in the Welcome window.
Fixed a problem where one side of a folder comparison could be empty after swapping A and B.
Repositories now show up to 10 repositories if you have System Settings > Control Center > Recent documents, applications, and servers set to None. Otherwise, the number set there is being used.
Other stability improvements.

Note

Thanks for reporting problems and submitting crashlogs! This help us provide quick bugfix releases.

Repositories and Details of a Repository

New Features

Support for Git Repositories and Major new Changeset Features
- There is a completely new section Repositories in the Welcome window that will be populated automatically as you open files inside git working directories. Or use the Add Repository button to explicitly add a working directory.
- Open common Git comparisons directly in Kaleidoscope. In addition to several variants of Working Copy Changes you can also show Changes in the last day, week or month and the Last 10, 50, 100 or 200 changes from right inside the details of a repository. Want to prepare for your daily standup? Review changes in the last day with a double-click.
- Compare any branches, tags, commits, … directly in Kaleidoscope. Reviewing feature branches before merging or creating a pull request, or comparing changes between releases (tags) are just some of the use cases supported directly within Kaleidoscope. Also, if you're picking up commit hashes you want to compare from any app on your system, paste them here to open changesets.
- Reopen recently used changesets. Very often, you may need to use certain changesets over and over. This is why recent changesets are now shown along with all other recent documents both in the overall Recents list and menu and also within the details of a repository. This applies to all git changesets from anywhere on your system.
- Invert order of changesets. In particular, when opening from another app like Tower, you may end up with the wrong order in Kaleidoscope, where the 'newer' revision is shown on the left. This feels weird, as deleted blocks have actually instead been added later, and so on. There's now a simple Open Inverted contextual menu command to fix that problem.
- Edit and open changesets. Picked the wrong branch, or want to compare with another tag? A new contextual menu command allows editing and opening recent changesets.
- Inspect commit details from within recent documents. Forgot what the commit in a recent document was about? Use the Show Details contextual menu command to show commit message and other details for that commit. Even open a changeset for that particular commit right from that place.
- Open the history of a file in a changeset. When looking at a changeset, you may want to see other changes that happened to a particular file over time. Now you can open the File History of that file from the changeset sidebar (and menu).
- Open the changeset for a File History entry. When looking at a commit for a particular file, you may wonder what other changes happened in that particular commit, or between that commit and the one below in the list. The new Open Changeset button offers that ability.
- Open Changeset in Kaleidoscope service. Select any (short) commit hash from any of your recent repositories, in any app that supports services on your Mac, and select Services > Open Changeset in Kaleidoscope to have Kaleidoscope show all changes in that commit. Yes, there is no step 2, it's pure magic. Particularly useful candidates are apps like Xcode and most Git Clients that don't support opening Changesets in Kaleidoscope. Also works in websites like github.com when managing to select the commit hash text.
- Kaleidoscope Prism: New Send Clipboard to New Changeset menu. If an app doesn't support services, copying the (short) hash to the clipboard and selecting this menu command will achieve the same.
New Referral Program. Share Kaleidoscope with your friends, coworkers, … and both enjoy a US$ 10 recurring discount. Starting today, when you invite someone using your personal referral link from within Kaleidoscope, that person will immediately receive a $10 discount for the first year of subscription. You will also receive a $ 10 discount that will be applied to your next renewal. Both discounts are recurring and will stay as long as both of you remain subscribed. You can gather discounts for up to 3 friends, giving you the opportunity to reduce the yearly cost by more than 30%, permanently!

Enhancements

There is a new File > Open File History… (⌃⌘O) menu command to directly open a file with the git history shown.
Reworked the window title and subtitle for (Git) Changesets. The main window title shows information about the entire changeset, while the subtitle displays information related to the file currently displayed.
The File Shelf entry for a git revision of a file now shows the commit date as Modified Date.
For the Folder Comparison, you can now turn off alternating table row backgrounds in Settings > Folder.
Find Kaleidoscope in Spotlight by typing diff, compare or merge.
User requested Text Theme Dracula has been added.

Bugfixes

In some cases, comparing app bundles or similar would cause the folder comparison to never finish.
Resolved a few rare and random potential (crash) problems when comparing text.
Various smaller performance improvements and bugfixes.

Enhancements

Adding a Navigate menu command for the Folder Comparison open the containing folder of an item in a new tab. This helps with copying items in subfolders.
Adding various View menu commands (with keyboard shortcuts) for the Image Comparison.
Increase the maximum zoom level in Image Comparisons.
Adding a toolbar item to switch the Difference Rendition in the Image Difference View.

Bugfixes

In Kaleidoscope 4.5, opening a Changeset (such as through git difftool) would no longer keep the keyboard focus in the sidebar, making it harder than before to review changed files.
Fix an issue where rows in the Folder Comparison could have all wrong backgrounds.
Smaller fixes.

New Features

Many new Text Themes have been added. Also, Text Themes now influence the overall background and text colors.
The Folder Comparison has an entirely new, more subtle, look. Bold type and blue text tell you at first glance what is different. Visit Settings > Folder to adjust icon and text size to your liking.
When used via git difftool --dir-diff, the folder comparison now follows symlinks, showing you live updates of the linked files, making the --dir-diff (-d) option much more usable with Kaleidoscope.

Enhancements

The File Properties now provide you with even more insights. Similar to the Folder Comparison, you can immediately see which side of the comparison is larger, newer, or where file permissions differ. If an item has modified extended attributes, those attributes are now shown.
Various smaller performance improvements in text views.
Visual updates to make the Path Bar more stable.
A few updates to Kaleidoscope Help

Bugfixes

Fixed an issue where the content could resize the changeset sidebar.
Various smaller fixes.

Bugfixes

Resolved an issue where equal items in a folder comparison could be reported as different. Note that items are often temporarily shown as different (due to date differences) while the content difference is still being calculated.
Collapsing and expanding folders in the folder comparison could sometimes get out of sync between A and B.

New Features

Outline view in folder compare. Instead of having to double-click into each subfolder to see what might be different 5 levels deep, Kaleidoscope now shows differences in all subfolders at first glance.
Jump to Line command. Kaleidoscope now enables you to quickly locate a specific line in any text view. As lines may not match in A, B and the merged view, select which one you want to jump to. Try out a few keyboard shortcuts for switching, they all work. ;)

Enhancements

Major Improvements when comparing folders

Comparing folders with many smaller items is now several magnitudes faster. Same for switching filters, sorting, and other operations.
Items that are symbolic links or aliases are now easier to distinguish.
Items (including folders) now show correct file sizes. Hover over any size to see a tooltip that includes the precise byte value.
More reasonable date display that adapts to available space. Hover any date to see the precise value down to the second.
Two new options to collapse all folders and to show all changes (on all levels). They can be found in the lower-left area of the window and the View menu.
Improved progress reporting for longer-running folder compare operations.
For symbolic links, Kaleidoscope now reports the file size of the link, not the linked item.
Many other smaller improvements.

Improved highlighting of changes and conflicts by making a clearer distinction between the selected and the unselected ones. Moreover, subtle improvements to color choices.
Added several keyboard shortcuts to the Find functionality.

Bugfixes

The folder comparison now correctly updates if items are modified, added or removed on any level.
Again, in the folder comparison: reduced memory consumption and fixed various memory leaks.
When opening a new image comparison, menu commands should now immediately work.
Fix a rare crash with local notifications.

Enhancements

Syntax Coloring is now available for SQL files.

Bugfixes

Fixed a memory issue in the Git File History, leading to unintended side effects.
Resolved rare cases where opening a comparison or merge with rather small files would be unreasonably slow.
Added a lot of additional safeguards to make the Git integration more reliable.
Using a newer (more stable) version of our Git Integration library.
Updated to the latest version of our Syntax Coloring library.
Fixed a few other small issues found after the last release.

New Features

Git File History now recognizes file renames and moves. You will now see the entire history of a file, even if it has been renamed or moved in the past. See the exact change in the commit detail popover. And there is the ability to search for all names of a file in the filter at the bottom of the list.
Integration with Git Accounts. Kaleidoscope will try to find a base URL for a known account type and automatically create links to issues, commits and branches where appropriate. Currently, GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket are supported, others will follow as needed. Click the small gear icon in the commit details popover to configure in case your repository has multiple remotes.
Display of Git References. Both the header in the merge document as well as the commit details will now list references (branches, tags) pointing to a commit.
Markdown in commit messages. While we were adding ticket and commit links, we also added styled display of markdown content in commit messages (again, in the commit details). We deeply enjoy that change and encourage everybody to use markdown in commit messages. A future self and your coworkers will thank you for the enhanced readability.

Enhancements

Support for Display P3 color profile in Image Comparison. Kaleidoscope now knows how to properly read and display images in saved with a Display P3 color profile. Apart from obvious technical use cases, this makes a (sometimes subtle) visual difference with photos shot on iPhone 7 and later.
Windows of recent documents will now remember their screen position and reopen where you closed them before.
Improve keyboard navigating and working with the Git File History.

Bugfixes

Fixed a few minor macOS Sonoma glitches.
A few other fixes we don't bother to mention in detail (aka. "bug fixes and performance improvements")

Bugfixes

Syntax highlighting for Elixir should now finally work in all cases
Using the Git File History no longer leads to a crash when a file has only one revision
Items in the File Shelf always have correct appearance
The Navigator in the Image Comparison no longer blinks randomly
Another rare crash no longer happens
A whole bunch of other maintenance

Enhancements

Syntax Coloring is now available for the High-Level Shader language.
Syntax Coloring is now available for the LLVM language.
Limited support for Syntax Coloring is available for the Metal Shader language.

Bugfixes

Opening Scala files not longer crashes the app.

New Features

A new area in the window title bar of merge documents clearly shows the state of a merge.
Major changes to resolving Git Merge Conflicts:

New Context Shelf with detailed information about the merge conflict at hand: Center area shows information about the ongoing merge, like branches being merged. Commits leading to the conflict from A and B are shown above A and B. Click to show full commit details.
Improvements to the Path Bar: Instead of repeating the same file name, the Path Bar shows the branches (of commits) being merged.

Enhancements

Enhanced stability for Git access
Support for git mailmap
Syntax Highlighting for Microsoft C# and Razor files
Commit messages can now be selected and copied in the Commit Details popover

Bugfixes

Reader View now also hides the File History when enabled
Better window restoration when working with multiple displays
Many other small fixes and improvements

Kaleidoscope showing the Git File History of a file.

New Features

Git File History. When opening a file that is inside a Git working copy, you can now show the File History as an inspector in Kaleidoscope. Each entry in that File History offers many extra features:

See name, short commit hash, (a shortened) commit message and date for each commit.
Select an entry to see more details about that commit in a popover, including the full commit message.
Click the A or B button in an entry to have that revision shown in A or B. This enables you to quickly compare any two versions of a file.
The contextual menu of an entry and the detail popover also offer a convenient command (Compare with Previous) to show the changes of that particular commit (to that file) in a comparison.
Both the contextual menu of the entry and the contextual menus of the various commit hash displays offer options to copy the short or full hash to the clipboard.
The File History can be fully navigated using the keyboard, including the "vim-style" shortcuts. Also note the keyboard shortcuts A and B or ◂ and ▸ to quickly show an entry in A or B while an entry is selected.
Below the list you find options to filter the list and to inspect different branches. Note you can also filter by year or month, in addition to commit hash, author name and email and commit message.
There is a new toolbar button and a new menu command to toggle the File History (if one is available).
The menu on the File Shelf items gained a new command Show File History, for files that can show a history. Use this command to switch the File History, in case a document has different files that have a separate File History.

New Compare with Previous Version button when opening a single file that is part of a Git working copy.
New Settings to define the default behavior when opening a file that is part of a Git working copy.
When comparing the two "most recent" versions of a file, the next time you open that document as a recent document, it will re-open the two most recent versions, even if the commits have changed in the meantime. This makes it very quick to look at the latest changes of a file.
The File History is available for both text and image comparisons.

Enhancements

Various improvements to the File Shelf items.
The Path Bar makes it clearer when a path is relative to a repository.
Kaleidoscope will be quicker in reacting to changes you make to files outside of Kaleidoscope.

Bugfixes

Fixed rare cases where Kaleidoscope could forget to reload a changed file.

Notes

The trial period has been reset. If you tested Kaleidoscope 4 before, you now can try again.

New Features

The Kaleidoscope Team plan is now available for purchase from our store. Please contact us for upgrades.

Enhancements

New Contextual menu entry New Comparison from Selection in folder comparisons. This aims to help with a situation where you suspect two unmatched items just being a simple file rename. This command allows comparing these two files directly from the folder comparison.
Drag & Drop improvements in the folder comparison. You can now drag arbitrary selections into other windows (or somewhere else, like onto Kaleidoscope Prism) to compare those items.
New text filter Normalize Spaces. It converts all sorts of custom unicode space characters to a regular space, thereby helping filter out differences in space characters.
Increased the contrast of the blue background difference highlight when using the dark appearance.
Increased the contrast of the scrollbar change indicators in both appearances.

Bugfixes

Fix an issue where dragging out the last item from the File Shelf may have closed the wrong window.
New version of the Alfred workflow (thanks to the Alfred team) that simplifies the workflow structure.
Wording changes related to team accounts.
Other small fixes here and there.

Enhancements

The Kaleidoscope Blog is now accessible from the Welcome window. Check it out to learn about specific features, use cases and other cool stuff related to Kaleidoscope. Also feel free to let us know what you would love to read about.
The last used font size for printing and exporting to PDF will now be remembered. Same goes for the visibility of the Kaleidoscope logo on the bottom of pages. (The ability to turn it off is a new feature in Kaleidoscope 4, BTW.)
poetry.lock files will now be automatically interpreted as TOML format and colored accordingly.
Kaleidoscope tries to be smarter when adding content through services (and some integrations using services). When you add multiple times within a minute, content will go to the same window instead of opening a new window each time.

Bugfixes

Some .strings files would be accidentally converted to XML when reading, thus causing an unintended format change when saving them after making changes.
Kaleidoscope Prism (if configured to Show when Dragging) would appear when dragging sidebar items in Tower, even though it can't handle the drop.
Dragging File Shelf items between documents now works in all cases.
Increased the time that ksdiff waits for Kaleidoscope to launch, in case your system is extremely busy.
Improved some outdated wording in the Integration window.
Fixed a few rare crashes.

Enhancements

Syntax Coloring is now available for the Scala language.
The default window size is now a lot more useful.

Bugfixes

The Alfred workflow now works with Kaleidoscope 4. Please update your installation.
All Kaleidoscope shortcut actions (have implicitly) changed with Kaleidoscope 4.

If you have created shortcuts yourself, you need to replace the Kaleidoscope actions with new versions. There's nothing we can do about that, but it won't happen any time again soon. Sorry!
We will release updated versions of the shortcuts we published on our blog over time.
For now, the Kaleidoscope Compare shortcut shipping with Kaleidoscope has been updated.

Fixed a few rare crashes.

Enhancements

Syntax Coloring is now available for the Dart language.
Syntax Coloring is now available for the Clojure language.

Bugfixes

Fixed instances where Kaleidoscope Prism would not send the clipboard with text copied from Electron-based apps like Slack.
Improved layout in the Text Filters window.
Improved a few aspects of the main toolbar.
Tried to work around an issue in AppKit where buttons used the wrong text color in the welcome window.
Fixed a rare crash in the HTML exporter.
Fixed a rate crash when toggling File Properties.

Bugfixes

Fix a frequent crash for users that don't have Xcode installed.

New Features

Syntax Coloring

Kaleidoscope renders your source code visually appealing and easier to read by applying customizable styling with multiple built-in themes. All popular languages are supported.

Comparison ➔ Merge

Have you always wanted to manually edit text in a comparison? Use the new Convert to Merge command and make the changes you want!

Text Filters

Powerful filters clean up diffs by removing irrelevant data, such as time stamps, object addresses and unique identifiers, and make it easy to see the important differences.

Kaleidoscope Prism

A new helper app in the menu bar makes it even easier to get content into Kaleidoscope! Includes a drop window and global shortcuts.

Python Integration

Welcome Python developers! Like lldb in Xcode integration, you can now launch a comparison directly from your pdb debugger.

Many Refinements

File metadata comparison, better menu structure, a modernized look, and much, much more make Kaleidoscope an even greater pleasure to use.

Enhancements

New Adaptive Zoom in Image Comparison. This new option aims to give you the perfect zoom out-of-the-box.
Folder Comparison improvements. You can now Quick Look files, group folders and more. File Properties help you understand differences in line endings, encoding or file permissions.
Changesets let you Quick Look items, very useful for file types that Kaleidoscope doesn't support natively.
Added the ability to turn off the Kaleidoscope logo when exporting or printing text comparisons.
Added a menu to the Kaleidoscope Dock item.
Made the paste behavior more intuitive. You can hit ⌘V in the welcome window to create a new comparison from the clipboard. When pressing ⌘V on an open document, the clipboard content will be added to the current document (if the type matches).
You can now use vi-inspired keyboard shortcuts in various places. Start by trying control-j and control-k in tables.

Bugfixes

Too many to note individually. Please use the feedback functionality to report new bugs we may have introduced as part of the major changes.

Kaleidoscope 6.1

8264

July 7, 2025

New

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 6.0.2

8147

June 11, 2025

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 6.0.1

8139

June 3, 2025

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 6.0

8104

May 27, 2025

New

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.4.2

7636

April 11, 2025

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.4.1

7599

March 26, 2025

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.4

7586

March 20, 2025

New

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.3.2

7447

January 23, 2025

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.3.1

7409

January 16, 2025

New Features

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.3

7379

January 14, 2025

New Features

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.2.1

7100

November 18, 2024

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.2

7064

October 31, 2024

New Features

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.1.2

6621

Sep 30, 2024

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.1.1

6605

Sep 9, 2024

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.1

6583

August, 29 2024

New Features

Enhancements

Bugfixes

Kaleidoscope 5.0.3