Using meld on Mac

using_meld_on_mac.md

Using Meld merging tool on Mac

Aug 2025

Best way to install is using official docs from osx repo here. Remember to configure meld as difftool in the command line as well.

May 2023

There are two ways of installing meld on osx, using brew and .dmg package (from @yousseb). Since I found https://yousseb.github.io/meld/, I've installed it with .dmg package, but having macOS Ventura Version 13.4 (22F66) in place, it's not even starting for me. So I tried brew installation, and the application is working as expected, including symlink to start it from the terminal.

Using brew formulae: https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/meld

brew install --cask meld

# set meld as your default git mergetool
git config --global merge.tool meld

Requires: macOS >= 10.13 meld has been officially discontinued upstream. It may stop working correctly (or at all) in recent versions of macOS.

Old versions

• Alternative method (by @yousseb), try .dmg package yourself: https://yousseb.github.io/meld (caveat: project haven't been updated since Jul 2022).

• Legacy methods (including old osx versions): https://gist.github.com/p1nox/6102015/4fa2a9ba9379879a35e113921770c85e09861e8a

Troubleshooting:

• If meld doesn't start from terminal, try this, modify the /usr/local/Caskroom/meld/3.19.2-r6,osx-15/meld.wrapper.sh script installed by brew to the following:

#!/bin/sh
rm -rf ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/org.gnome.meld.savedState
exec '/Applications/Meld.app/Contents/MacOS/Meld' "$@"

@yousseb
Thanks so much ! Your meld.dmg is very very helpful. FYI, I have been using DiffMerge for mac and that works very well.

It took a bit to configure the filters for Meld... like removing .svn .target *.class etc etc.

In general DiffMerge behaves more like a normal Mac app and provides a more condensed results window. Meld uses a different file picker, and shows all folders along with difference results. So if I have 400 folders and two changes, DiffMerge just shows two lines, one for each different file, while Meld shows all the folders and down the list, I would find the two different files.

Also, the color coding on Meld is nicer.

Anyways ... thanks again !

John

Great dmg @yousseb!

Update: For those who have problems in newer versions Homebrew/legacy-homebrew#36824

If you try:

$ brew install meld
Error: No available formula for meld 
Searching formulae...
Searching taps...`

Instead try:

$ brew install homebrew/x11/meld

Thanks for the dmg @yousseb, very useful.

python crashes for me too!

Well the dmg version works smoothly on Yosemite thanks @yousseb

Need to install Xcode and do "xcode-select --install" before you can do "brew install".

python crashes for me

@p1nox Do you can update the brew install line for brew install homebrew/gui/meld ?

any chance to increase the font size? Do you guys know how to do that?

Launched successfully

👍 for the font size issue.

I seem to recall that some time ago you used to have some way to configure gtk properties for all the gtk-based applications.

I guess it's brew install caskroom/cask/meld now.

In case you are on High Sierra and having

frozen: ImportError
Cannot import: GTK+
dlopen(/Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.7/gi/_gi.so, 2): Symbol not found: _inflateValidate
  Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib
  Expected in: /Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Frameworks/libz.1.dylib
 in /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib

See: yousseb/meld#51

I have just managed to install and lauch meld with the following steps:
$ brew tap homebrew/cask
$ brew cask install meld

Thank you @p1nox for the gist!

In case you are on High Sierra and having

frozen: ImportError
Cannot import: GTK+
dlopen(/Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.7/gi/_gi.so, 2): Symbol not found: _inflateValidate
  Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib
  Expected in: /Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Frameworks/libz.1.dylib
 in /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib

See: yousseb/meld#51

Worked!