A greatly enhanced Raycast extension is the latest result of our continuous quest to improve your productivity and integrate Kaleidoscope with apps you love. Kaleidoscope 6.1 and later support all features of this extension.
Raycast
If you haven’t heard of Raycast, think about it as a keyboard-driven launcher, similar to Alfred, LaunchBar, or the legendary QuickSilver, for those who still remember. But Raycast doesn’t stop there. A major part of its functionality (for me personally) is AI chat, offering convenient access to many models of various vendors in a unified interface. There is a Clipboard History, something you don’t want to miss ever again once you start using it, and many other features, too many to name here. But most importantly, Raycast can be enhanced by anyone through extensions. There’s a vibrant ecosystem with hundreds of extensions for all kinds of use cases and apps.
See your aliases and keyboard shortcuts along with search results, enabling you to increase productivity over time.
Meet the Kaleidoscope Raycast extension
A simple extension for Kaleidoscope had existed for a while, thanks to Gregor Longariva, but I always found it a bit too limited for my own daily use. Nobody on our team had the necessary time or inclination to look into extension development. Luckily, there is Boris Matos, a passionate Kaleidoscope customer. He implemented some great enhancements for himself and approached us. Together we were able to refine the experience and make the improved Raycast Kaleidoscope extension an officially supported solution for all customers.
What does it do?
The current version of the extension has four commands for opening various content in Kaleidoscope. All of them use the Finder selection if the Finder is the frontmost app, or look for content on the clipboard:
- Compare Files. Select any number of files or folders in Finder, or add up to 6 items to the Raycast Clipboard History.
- Compare Clipboards. Compares the last two entries of the Raycast Clipboard History. They can be text, images, or files.
- Open Git File History. Select a file and see the entire history of that file, available with comparisons between any two revisions.
- Open Changeset. Supply a Git commit identifier (also commonly known as commit hash) to see the entire changeset.
The Road ahead
Now, go check out Raycast and our Kaleidoscope extension in the Raycast store. Install the extension (you can just click the Install button here), use it, and let us know what we should add next. We have some ideas, but would love to hear about your needs.
