Mediocre performance and poor support, completely unusable in El Capitan

- Update (1 star) -
Kaleidoscope is completely unusable on El Capitan, and was already doing really badly on previous versions of OS X. It frequently fails to load up folder and file comparisons, and even when it is working, it often stops comparing and has to be completely restarted to get it working again. Folder comparisons sometimes show that files and folders have changes, then when opening them up there aren’t any differences. It’s horrendously bad and really shouldn’t be for sale anymore. There’s no way Apple would have authorized this app if it had to pass through a review today. It hasn’t been updated in 18 months, despite massive bugs. At this point, you’d have to be insane to spend money on this app.

- Previous Review (2 stars) -
I continue to be disappointed by Kaleidoscope. In general, its only so-so as a diff tool. There are a number of things it mislabels as additions or modifications, and its not great at separating groups of changes like it claims to. The bigger issue here is that it only offers a raw diff, so its mostly useless for comparing two XML files that may have changed spacing and formating, but contain similar content.

One of the biggest problems is performance and lack of decent multi-threading. Whenever I compare large folders of a few hundred files each, the app freezes up for a very long time. Not only does it lock up the window loading these folders, but every window, regardless of what they are comparing.

There are also a lot of basic usability issues, especially regarding keyboard shortcuts and basic operations, that dont work correctly.

Ive reported many of the issues and bugs Ive seen to the developers, including screenshots, videos, and assorted other samples, but a lot of it has been dismissed as issues theyre not interested in fixing. After 6 months without an update or even a simple bug fix, Ive got a feeling theyve abandoned the app but dont want to stop making sales. I would strongly recommend staying away from Kaleidoscope, even if a new version finally comes out.

speed_pour about Kaleidoscope