When I find myself wanting a split diff in the terminal, I tend to gravitate towards just using Vim’s built in diff mode via vim-fugitive. I even have some git aliases that will open vim and and show fugitive diffs for every file changed on the current branch.

The I like this over fancy CLI diff viewers for a handful of reasons:

- It re-uses my editor config (no need to fuss with that tools ad hoc config format)

- I can navigate the diff with my editor’s navigation tools (expand or hide context lines, open/close/reorganize tabs, etc.)

- My editor’s language-aware tooling kicks in. I can jump to def, reveal types, and find all references while reading the diffs.

I wrote more about some of the specific workflows I use in this post, if you’re curious to level up from a CLI-only diff workflow:

https://blog.jez.io/cli-code-review/

There’s a time and a place for CLI-only diff viewers, and kudos to the author for building a tool they enjoy! I’ve just found that they fit into a sort of uncanny valley of simplicity and power for my needs.