Document Comparison Tool For Mac

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2. Free Document Comparison Software
3. Free Document Compare Tool
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5. Online Document Comparison Tool
6. File Comparison Tool For Mac

File Compare is a GUI to the md5 Unix command. With this small app you can compare two files and look whether they are digitally identical. With this small app you can compare two files and look whether they are digitally identical. Compare two PDF files with our redesigned Compare Files tool — and know you’ve caught every change. Compare two versions. A highlight bar helps you quickly spot all text and image differences between PDFs. One of the few diff tools that works with more than just text and image files, Araxis Merge lets you also compare office documents (like MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, or ODF). For people working on both Windows and Mac, it's great to know that a single license is valid for both platforms. UltraCompare is available for English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish. Sign up for our monthly newsletter for updates on new releases, specials and more! *We will not share your address with anyone and all email addresses are kept completely confidential.

My favorite file comparison tool was Beyond Compare but since I recently switched to OS X, i'm no longer able to use it and I'm looking for an alternative, preferably a free one.

Update: I made the mistake not to specify that I am also looking for a tool that does directory comparison, not only files. Because this could make the already answers invalid I made another question for this What directory comparison tools can I use on OS X?

locked by nohillside♦Dec 12 '15 at 7:24

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16 Answers

Beyond Compare 4 now runs also on OSX. Visit http://www.scootersoftware.com/beta.php?zz=beta4_whatsnew

This is an aggregation of the answers posted on SO's deleted clone, Graphical diff for Mac OS X. It includes links to each product, and the current price since last edit in USD.

Note that any links to SO will only be visible to users who can view deleted content, which requires either moderator privileges or 10k reputation on that site.

• Sourcegear's DiffMerge, shareware
• Joachim Eibl's KDiff3, free
• Black Pixel's Kaleidoscope, $69.99
• Bare Bones Software's TextWrangler, free
• Araxis's Merge, $129 + $29/year
• Deltopia's DeltaWalker, $39.95/$75.95
• Kai Willadsen's Meld, free
• Weipin Xia's DiffFork, $26
• Biscade's RoaringDiff, free
• tkdiff, free

There were some other suggestions, which were not diff tools in their own right, which I will list below:

• It (Beyond Compare) runs well in Wine, but I miss the shell integration. - Danyal Aytekin, May 11 '12, 13:01
• Eclipse also has a fairly decent comparison mechanism. - JeeBee, Oct 9 '08, 12:45
• P4Merge that comes with Perforce is pretty good and comes for free with perforce client. Both terminal and GUI version. - amok, Jul 7 '10, 23:19
• I had to use Vim because most of diffs mentioned here do not understand UTF-8. - user184880, Oct 6 '09, 9:56

That about wraps up that thread's merge into this one, as covered here.

FileMerge is bundled with XCode, but I prefer Kaleidoscope which is not free.

I use Kaleidoscope. Or just plain, old diff from the CLI

It is not great, but the FileMerge bundled with the OS can be launched from the command line as opendiff a.txt b.txt.

You can use diff if you're using the command-line.

Changes.app has a great reputation and lots of features. Kaleidoscope is great too, and has a beautifully designed UI.

It's also worth mentioning if you're doing programming that Xcode 4 has visual diff tools built in now too.

There's also DeltaWalker.

It's $40, and there's a trial available.

Here are which I've found:

• FileMerge (opendiff)

  It's bundled with Xcode with Command Line Tools installed

• DiffMergeIt's bundled with Xcode with Command Line Tools installed

• It's free and open source. Install by: brew install vim.

• Can be installed using Homebrew via command: brew install meld, but probably it won't work.

• Can be installed using Homebrew via command: brew install kdiff3

• Can be installed using Homebrew via command: brew install tkdiff

• Available at App Store

• Commercial with free trial.

• Commercial with free trial.

• Commercial with free trial.

Check also Comparison of file comparison tools at Wikipediafor the full list.

There are a great many comparison tools available. Many do directories and files. Some even perform as merge tools (2 and 3 way). Of these some have already been mentioned in other answers and your choice will depend on what features you require, and how much you are prepared to pay for the tool. There is a good Wikipedia page with a comparison of many of the better known ones.

I use Folder Sync It costs $8.99 on the Mac App Store. It works really nicely.

P4Merge is a free, very nice diff and merge tool. It can:

• Diff files
• Do 3 way merges
• Do Folder diffs
• Visually diff 2 image files!

Some screenshots:

Visual diff of an image:

This tool https://filecomparisontool.com

1. Web based, so it is compatible
2. Mobile friendly
3. Save comparison up to 6 months
4. Share comparison via URL
5. It is free!

vim also has built-in support for side-by-side diff -

Here is a page describing vim diff mode in detail -

GitX-dev is a fork (variant) of GitX, a long-defunct GUI for the git version-control system. It has been maintained and enhanced with productivity and friendliness oriented changes, with effort focused on making a first-class, maintainable tool for today's active developers.

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While there is an essential “sameness” to all these apps, you will still find that some features found in the Windows version are nowhere to be found on the Mac. For example, the option to add a pop-up calendar to a table—a feature you’ll find in the Windows version—isn’t available on the Mac. But...if you use your Mac to add a properly formatted date to a document with a table including that feature, the field will retain the calendar option when you open it again on a PC.

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Bottom line

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Microsoft Word 2016 is an excellent update to what is, for most users, an important business tool. Changes to the program’s user interface make it easy for anyone to bounce from Word on a Mac to Word on any other platform with a minimal transitional curve. Word’s collaboration features make it possible for business users to work on the computing platform of their choosing without making significant sacrifices.

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While the program doesn’t support some of Yosemite’s more important, user friendly, and bacon-saving features—such as Autosave—the overall user experience is superb. In short, Microsoft Word gets the job done without getting in the way, If Word is your primary tool for getting work done with words, run, don’t walk to upgrade to Word 2016.

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File Comparison Tool For Mac

• Microsoft Word 2016 for Mac

  If Word is your primary tool for getting work done with words, run, don't walk to upgrade to Word 2016.

  Pros

  • Clean, updated user interface
  • Excellent collaboration features, including threaded comments
  • Seamless integration with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Sharepoints

  Cons

  • Currently only available with and Office 365 subscriptions
  • Does not support Yosemite's Autosave and Versions features
  • Documents you're collaborating on are only updated as long as everyone saves their documents
  • Not all features of Word for Windows are available in Word for Mac.