Several years ago I had a series of posts here called "Apps I Love". Many of the apps I loved back then I still do, but right now I want to highlight a special part of my tool bag. It's my diff tool of choice: Kaleidoscope. I freaking love this thing, and it's just received its first update in a while to v2.3.

If you've never seen a diff tool in action (or even heard the term), basically what it does is can take 2 things and tell you the difference between them. Kaleidoscope can diff text files, folder contents in the Finder, git branches, and even images. I use it most frequently in my development workflow when resolving conflicts during code merges but have definitely used its folder support before too. It plugs nicely in to my git app of choice Tower (which I should probably write about too).

I do have a funny story to share about Kaleidoscope in closing. Version 2.0 came out 7 years ago, in early 2013. At that point I was barely writing any code and definitely not professionally. I heard about v2's release somehow (probably from one of the tech-related Twitter accounts I was following) and Black Pixel was doing some Twitter contests for free copies. I'm a sucker for stuff like that even if I have no idea how to use what I'm winning. I ended up winning a copy and being lost as to what it did. Fast forward a year or so and I'm learning development and see in Tower that it has a way to trigger Kaleidoscope as the diff tool! That was my gateway to a bigger world 🙂

I really hope this new version is a harbinger of things to come and that some day they'll release a version that I need to pay for. So go check out Kaleidoscope and come to love it as much as I do!