Diff Anything 1.8 is live on the Mac App Store and Microsoft Store. This release is about the moment two copies of a folder have both changed, such as a project on your laptop and on a USB stick.

What's new:

• Much faster on large files and folders; folder results appear as they are found

• A Preview pane under the folder list shows the changed lines of the file you click, and follows the arrow keys

• Each folder shows its size on both sides and how many of its files differ, and a filter lists entries by content, moved or renamed, or permissions only

• With Pro: Update both gives each folder what only the other has and the newer of each changed file, with a preview, nothing deleted, and one undo

• With Pro: move files to the Trash or Recycle Bin, rename them, and set their dates from the list, each with undo

• Applying a YAML or XML change keeps the rest of the file exactly as written

A revised budget arrives with updated the numbers. Before approving it, you need to know which hours, totals, and dates changed.

I make Diff Anything. In this worked example, two versions of a project budget have six changed cells across Budget and Timeline: development hours rise from 70 to 86, testing hours from 15 to 19, both totals increase, and the launch moves from 15 May to 29 May.

To review the revision:

1. Open the older Excel workbook on the left and the revision on the right.

I wrote up the check I use before wiping a laptop or deleting originals: compare the original folder with its backup in Diff Anything and read what is missing, changed, only in the backup, or moved.

The part people miss: a copy can differ in content while its name, size, and date still match. For an exact copy check, turn on Compare hashes, turn off data-aware comparison of JSON and YAML and archive-content comparison, and check hidden files and ignore patterns.

Guide with a 2:30 walkthrough: https://martingruner.com/blog/ch...

How do you verify your backups today: spot checks, a backup app's own report, or a full comparison?

Diff Anything 1.7 is out on Mac and Windows. It's the biggest update so far:

• A merge tool for Git (Pro): config files merge by their data, with a conflict only where both sides changed the same value

• SQLite databases compared by schema and rows

• Binary files compared byte by byte in a hex view

• Jupyter notebooks compared by cell

• Ignore rules for timestamps, IDs, and comments

• The interface in German and French

Full post with screenshots: https://martingruner.com/blog/di...

A report looks right in Excel, but the receiving system shows different numbers. Before changing the import settings, check the exported file against the sheet it came from.

I make Diff Anything. This is a practical way to use its CSV-to-workbook comparison:

1. Save the workbook, then export the sheet you intend to send. Keep those two files together so you are checking the same version.

2. Open the CSV or TSV on one side of Diff Anything and the workbook on the other. Under Compare with sheet, select the sheet you exported; the comparison starts with the workbook s first sheet.

If red and green highlights are hard to distinguish, checking whether a line was added or removed takes extra effort. I make Diff Anything, and its free Blue and yellow setting gives Mac and Windows users another way to review a comparison.

To try it, open Settings Appearance Difference colors, choose Blue and yellow, then Save Settings. Additions become blue, removals yellow, and changed values neutral gray. Your choice is saved and works in light and dark themes.

You can check the meaning in words as well. Open the accessible workspace with Command-Shift-A on Mac or Control-Shift-A on Windows. A changed JSON field can read name: changed from Ada to Grace, so you can verify the exact values and move between differences using the keyboard.

A useful first check: compare two small files you already know. Include one addition, one removal, and one changed value, then compare the highlights with the written descriptions. All file comparison stays on your computer, with no AI involved.

Diff Anything 1.5 adds Smart Diff as an optional code view while keeping the conventional Line Diff available.

Smart Diff aligns language-aware tokens through formatting and reflow. Line Diff remains the literal line-by-line view. Both retain normal syntax highlighting, exact source text, editing, moved-block cues, and reviewed apply actions. Smart Diff uses conservative language-family rules rather than claiming compiler-level AST equivalence.

The view is available for all 117 non-plain-text editor languages. Version 1.5 adds maintained definitions for Ada, Assembly, COBOL, Crystal, CUDA, D, Elm, Erlang, Fortran, GLSL, Haskell, Haxe, HLSL, LaTeX, LLVM IR, OCaml, Raku, and WebAssembly text.

This release also improves large-comparison performance, cancellation, virtualization, interaction feedback, accessibility, and recovery. Everything runs locally on macOS and Windows, without accounts, cloud comparison, analytics, or telemetry.

Diff Anything 1.4 is out, with a much broader archive comparison engine.

It now compares ZIP/ZIP64/ZIPX, ZIP-based packages, 7z, RAR, TAR families, standalone Gzip, Bzip2, XZ, and Zstandard streams, encrypted ZIP/7z/RAR archives, and supported multipart 7z/RAR sets. Entries are matched by normalized path and streamed content hash, so timestamps, compression levels, member order, and other packaging-only changes do not create false differences.

The three-way merge workspace has also been redesigned. Ours and Theirs are each compared with Base, conflict navigation is clearer, unchanged source lines can collapse, bulk Ours/Theirs choices and reset are available, and compatible character-level changes on the same line can merge automatically.

Everything runs locally on macOS and Windows. There is no account, upload, cloud comparison service, analytics, or telemetry.

Diff Anything 1.3 is out, and cross-format spreadsheet comparison is the biggest change.

You can now compare stored cell values across XLSX, ODS, Apple Numbers, CSV, and TSV even when the two files use different formats without converting first. Spreadsheet mode deliberately compares stored values, not formulas, formatting, charts, macros, or workbook layout.

I also rebuilt folder diff around two-pane tree and table views, search, status filters, moved-file detection, and safer synchronization plans. PDF review now separates visual page comparison which can reveal changed charts, images, visible signatures, stamps, and layout from extracted-text comparison for wording changes.

Everything still runs locally on macOS and Windows. There is no account, upload, cloud comparison service, analytics, or telemetry.

I built Diff Anything because I kept running into comparison tools that worked for one input type but broke down when I moved between text, JSON, folders, images, and PDFs.

Version 1.2 is mainly about making those difficult cases more predictable. Ambiguous structured inputs now fail more clearly, repeated headers and keys are handled more carefully, masked environment values stay masked, image transparency and large decoded images have safer boundaries, and PDF text is kept separate from rendered-page evidence.

The desktop app, CLI, Git integration, and batch workflows now share the same comparison boundaries. You can try every desktop comparison engine for free within explicit preview limits; the free CLI remains text and JSON.

Everything runs locally there's no account, cloud comparison service, analytics, or telemetry.