Kaleidoscope 3

Advanced file versioning and comparison for your data

$149.99 From kaleidoscope.app

Needs macOS 11.1 or later

Kaleidoscope 3 is a file comparison app for Mac that aims to help you stay on top of different versions of all kinds of files. There are actually more use cases for this than you might imagine. At the more technical end of things, it allows coders to quickly compare versions of code documents that have been worked on by different people, quickly highlighting the changes and letting you copy lines of code between documents with just a couple of clicks. For more everyday users, the same can be done with text documents, say if you are an editor dealing with Word, text, or PDF documents that have been updated or changed by a writer. It’s like a track changes feature but it works independently of any particular word processing app.

It’s not just text that you can compare. Drop two folders into the app and you’ll see their contents compared, with equal items shown in green and unequal ones — that exist in one folder but not the other — in red. Again, you can “equalize” items, copying them between folders. This becomes especially useful when you have, say, folders full of hundreds of items and trying to spot small differences at a glance is very difficult.

It can also compare image files, even spotting single pixels of difference, which it can show with a special highlight. You can’t then clone a change between images like you can with text or files, but you can at least see the differences that exist. There’s integration with multiple version control systems for coders, so text can be sent from your platform of choice directly into Kaleidoscope, though this is of interest mainly to programmers.

Kaleidoscope 3 is the first major update to the app in a while, adding M1 support, dark mode, and a reader view as well as several view options. Its price makes it more likely to appeal to coders than casual Mac users, and indeed it’s the code comparison features that make it especially powerful while at the same time remaining friendly to use. For people just doing day–to–day file management it might be a stretch but it is nonetheless a great app to manage data.

THE BOTTOM LINE. An effective way to manage multiple versions of files and folders. HOLLIN JONES

Compare the contents of directories, load images to compare changes, and use more than two files in the app to switch between A and B sources.

Deep integration with coding platforms lets those comfortable with the command line go even deeper.