Kaleidoscope is a program for comparing files on your Mac. It enables you to compare images, text documents, directories, and many others. The utility features a user-friendly interface, immediately completes any given task and supports drag-and-drop actions.
All you need to do is to drag-and-drop the two items you wish to compare over the program's interface and Kaleidoscope will immediately provide you with the results you need.
In my testing, I compared two text documents. One of the documents was missing several rows. The utility immediately indicated the differences. I also compared 2 directories and got the accurate results I needed within moments.
Unfortunately, an important disadvantage is the fact that you cannot use Kaleidoscope to edit or sync the imported data. Other tools from the same category offer you this feature. Also, you can easily find cheaper solutions for comparing files and folders on your Mac, with some of them being specialized in comparing certain types of data, like text documents or images.
However, Kaleidoscope brings other helpful features which some might find of great use.
v2.0 [Nov 23, 2012]
Thank you for being our customers! We've got a great update for you with a lot of tweaks and fixes to make using Kaleidoscope even better. As always, please send any feedback, feature requests, or bug reports to [email protected].
Text Scope
✧ Improved the visual appearance of the change count stepper in Text Scope.
✧ Fixed the "Reset Selection" menu item in Text Scope to enable and disable properly.
✧ The Save menu is now properly disabled when comparing text snippets.
✧ Fixed a bug where the summary text in document titles and tabs might not properly update.
✧ The Resolved document in Three Way Blocks now has better alignment with similar content in A and B.
✧ Kaleidoscope can now properly diff .textClipping documents.
Folder Scope
✧ User-defined system date formats will now be properly used.
✧ Fixed a bug that prevented Folder Scopes table of files and folders not have keyboard focus by default.
Image Scope
✧ Kaleidoscope now handles different color spaces more reliably in Image Scope.
✧ Kaleidoscope now properly accounts for camera orientation when displaying images in Image Scope.
Changesets
✧ Improved keyboard navigation in changesets.
✧ Unsaved files will now be properly marked as dirty in changesets.
✧ Changesets now properly select the list of files on the left when opening, allowing you to quickly review changes.
General Improvements
✧ If you ask Kaleidoscope to move itself to the Applications folder, it will no longer move itself to ~/Applications if that folder exists. It will now move to /Applications in all cases.
✧ Fixed a bug that caused the corner radii of windows in Full Screen to not match.
✧ Fixed an issue that sometimes led to poor vertical alignment in the File Shelf.
✧ Dragging files to Kaleidoscope will properly open to a comparison document and will no longer leave the launch window open in the background.
✧ Fixed a bug that caused accessing files from the Recents list to sometimes stop working.
✧ Improved the messaging if Kaleidoscope is unable to open a document that was previously available via AFP.
Keep on diffin'!
