Following a tradition we started last year, this post collects a few illustrated tips about lesser-known additions to Kaleidoscope in 2025. Small features that can come in very handy once you know they exist. On the menu for today:
- Option-Click Collapse
- File Type Overrides and Interpret as Text
- Scroll Beyond the Edge of Images
- Automatic Updates
- Lookup Commit Window
- Colored Path Bar Icon in Folder Comparison
- Use Text Filters with AI Commands
Option-Click Collapse
With Kaleidoscope 6.0, unchanged lines in diffs can now be collapsed automatically. This massively cuts the size of diffs to check for larger files that only contain few changes. However, since Kaleidoscope does not understand your content, it may be necessary to expand some of those collapsed lines to get a clear picture of a change.
Maybe you expanded a few areas of a file, but then want to collapse everything again to get the best possible overview? Just click the expand/collapse button while holding ⌥ (option) in the bottom toolbar to quickly collapse all expanded areas in one go. This makes it easy to switch between detailed inspection of certain areas and a high-level overview.
File Type Overrides and Interpret as Text
Kaleidoscope 6.0 (released in late May) brought a completely new Settings window. Along came a new File tab with two options that can be very useful in certain scenarios, in particular when combined:
File Type Overrides lets you override what macOS believes the type of content is for a file with a certain file extension. For example, when encountering a file name “Text.zip”, macOS believes this is a zip archive, a binary file that can be expanded using apps like Archive Utility.
The second option is named Try to interpret unsupported files as text. This means that when Kaleidoscope encounters a file type that it does not natively support, for example a zip archive, it will still try to read it as text content.
This is a somewhat artificial example—comparing zip archives is rarely useful—but it illustrates how these two options can work together.
Scroll Beyond the Edge of Images
In December, Kaleidoscope 6.4 brought a completely new implementation of the Image Comparison, a lot faster and better than before. When an image is bigger than the window showing it, the image can be scrolled to its edge when using common scroll methods. This is the expected behavior of scrolling content on macOS.
However, sometimes you may want inspect details of an edge of an image, such as rounded corners of an asset for an app. For that, scrolling beyond the edge gives you a better view of the edge of the image. Kaleidoscope supports this scenario, too. Hold down the button of your trackpad or mouse and drag the image beyond the edge.
Sample images used from the repository of svglogos.dev.
Automatic Updates
In March, we released Kaleidoscope 5.4 with a reimagined workflow for updating Kaleidoscope. Finding the right moment to update an app is rarely convenient—especially when you just want to get work done. Now there is great relief for you: Automatic Updates.
Just turn it on once and you’ll get all future updates installed automatically when you quit Kaleidoscope. Since the Welcome window will show you the latest release notes on next launch, you will never miss what’s new in Kaleidoscope.
Lookup Commit Window
One really helpful thing that even I keep forgetting about is the Lookup Commit window added in Kaleidoscope 5.3. Rather often I stumble upon a specific commit, in Xcode, Git Tower, Taska, or even in the GitHub web page and want to learn more about it and its context in the repository. I’ve grown to appreciate the Git File History and Changesets in Kaleidoscope more than anything else for that.
There’s a trivial two-step solution:
- Copy a (short) commit identifier for a commit to the clipboard.
- Switch to Kaleidoscope and press ⌃⌘L
In addition to showing all relevant commit details, the window offers quick access to showing a Changeset.
Colored Path Bar Icon in Folder Comparison
Kaleidoscope 6.2 released in early August brought major improvements to the folder comparison, like copying arbitrary items on any level and a detailed confirmation dialog.
While Kaleidoscope 6.3 focused on the look and feel of macOS Tahoe, it also brought a small but notable enhancement to the folder comparison: when comparing folders with identical names, it’s easy to lose track of which one is A and which is B. When you set a tag color in Finder for distinction, Kaleidoscope now shows those colors in the Path Bar.
Use Text Filters with AI Commands
AI-based coding agents have come a long way recently. One very common application is to let your favorite agent add comments to code, either your own old code or code you inherited from someone else. But how do you ensure that the agent did not also make unintended code changes?
Use one of the new Text Filters provided in Kaleidoscope 6.4.1 to quickly filter out the most common code comments in one simple step. This quickly lets you identify changes outside comments.
Small Features, Real Impact
Many of these features started out as customer feedback or small, incremental ideas, but turned out to have a noticeable impact on our own everyday work once they shipped.
If you’ve come across a Kaleidoscope feature that quietly earned its place in your workflow—or if there’s something you feel is still missing—we’d love to hear from you.
