What if Photoshop had Version History? (REFLO in one sentence)

"So what does this app actually do?"

That's the question I hear most when I introduce REFLO. If I say "it's a version control app," people tend to tilt their heads. Thinking about it, I would too if I were hearing it for the first time. So today I want to explain it from scratch.

You've used Google Docs, right?

If you've ever worked on a document in Google Docs, you've probably clicked the Version history menu in the top-right at least once. Open it and every sentence you wrote yesterday, every paragraph you deleted today, is still there in chronological order—you can go back to any point whenever you want. It piles up automatically, without anyone asking you to.

REFLO is that same feature, brought over to Photoshop and Illustrator files.

That's really all you need to understand. No other explanation required.

There's just one difference

Google Docs is text, so it can show you "which sentences changed" as a written comparison. Images don't work that way. So REFLO lets you compare the changes with your own eyes—side by side, stacked with a slider, or highlighting only the parts that changed.

Everything else is the same as Google Docs. Just save with Cmd+S, and that moment is recorded automatically. No separate backups, no extra bits tacked onto the filename.

This is when you'll use it

Friday afternoon, a message from the client: "I think yesterday's version was better. Could we get that one again?" But that file is already overwritten and gone—used to be the moment you'd break into a cold sweat. With REFLO, you open the timeline, go back to the save from yesterday, and you're done.

If you've been on a Mac for a long time

Time Machine might feel more familiar. That way of flipping through the screen in time order and returning to a past state of your Mac—REFLO's timeline works on the same principle. The only difference is the subject: not the whole Mac, just one working file.

In one sentence

It's Google Docs Version history, for Photoshop files. That's REFLO.

Point it at a single working folder and the rest piles up automatically. Even on the free plan, you can try the last 14 days of history and basic compare.

👉 Get REFLO History on the Mac App Store

Does that click a bit more this way? If anything still feels confusing, leave a comment. I'll use it to decide where the next post goes.