Kaleidoscope Release Notes

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.

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.

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 syste
  • 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.

Notes

• While this is a major new version, you current Kaleidoscope subscription continues to be valid for Kaleidoscope 5 and beyond. Users of Kaleidoscope 2 and Kaleidoscope 3 can upgrade at the same conditions as before: if you purchased Kaleidoscope 3 after Jan 1, 2023, you will get the first year of subscription at no cost, otherwise it will be 50% off.
• Everyone gets a fresh 14-day trial period for Kaleidoscope 5.

Enhancements

• Adding a Navigate menu command for the Folder Comparison to 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 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 no 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

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.

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 use it for free for another 14 days.

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.

Welcome to Kaleidoscope 4, a major new release of Kaleidoscope! This release introduces many delightful new features and enhancements. It also addresses a lot of the feedback we have received over the last years.

Kaleidoscope 4 is a paid upgrade and requires a yearly or monthly subscription. As a valued customer, you get 50% off your first year's subscription.

New Features

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.