Kaleidoscope 4 Release Notes

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.