What's New in Beyond Compare 4
MAC OS X VERSION
At long last, Beyond Compare runs natively on Macs!
BC for Mac has all the power and functionality you've come to expect from Beyond Compare, now with native look and feel, speed, and enhancements to make it feel at home.
NEW HOME VIEW
The new Home View adds session search and web resources. The layout is easier to manage with on-screen controls.
And, we think it's prettier too!
3-WAY FOLDER MERGE 
Three-way merging now extends to folders. Compare independent changes against a common ancestor to quickly merge your changes with someone else's. It makes merging your customizations into a new release a snap.
AD HOC UNIMPORTANT TEXT
It is now easier to define unimportant text in your Text Compares. Define unimportant terms directly from the Rules dialog, rather than having to edit your file formats.
WEBDAV, AMAZON S3, SUBVERSION, DROPBOX AND ONEDRIVE SUPPORT
In addition to FTP, you can access WebDAV resources, Amazon S3 buckets, Subversion repositories, Dropbox's cloud storage, and Microsoft OneDrive directly from within Beyond Compare. Organize your remote service profiles with friendly names and folder hierarchies.
OVERHAULED PICTURE COMPARE
Picture Compare has a new look, with automatic zoom, pixel-level details, and simplified controls. Tolerance comparison mode uses grayscale to reveal the image along with the differences. It's also faster, uses less memory, and supports additional image formats.
OVERHAULED PREFERENCES DIALOG WITH SEARCH
The reorganized options dialog includes a search feature for finding specific settings quickly. Commands for all comparison types can be customized without first having to open a view.
OTHER SIGNIFICANT FEATURES
- Hex Compare supports in-line editing and wraps lines to fit the window.
- New View Patch command shows diff/patch files as a text comparison.
- HTML folder comparison reports can now embed links to file comparisons.
- Added option to align filenames with different extensions in folder compare.
- File operations can be paused in the folder compare.
- Added new text comparison algorithm choice based on Bram Cohen's Patience Diff.
- Improved appearance on high DPI (retina) displays.
Windows only:
- Portable media devices such as cameras, MP3 players, and Android phones can be compared.
- 7-zip archives can be created or compared, and many other archive types have read-only support, including IMG/ISO disk images.
- Zipx archives can be compared, complete with PPMd, LZMA, and WavPack compression.
- Version Compare now compares the fixed PE header in addition to the version resource.
- Remote Windows servers can be loaded as base folders (e.g., \\server), allowing access to all of its shares.
NEW IN VERSION 4.1
- 64-bit version that handles significantly larger comparisons.
- Microsoft Excel spreadsheet comparison is faster and no longer requires Excel.
- Microsoft Word and Excel comparison now supported under other platforms.
- Microsoft OneDrive support.
- IPv6 networking supported.
Intelligent Comparison
Beyond Compare is focused. Beyond Compare allows you to quickly and easily compare your files and folders. By using simple, powerful commands you can focus on the differences you're interested in and ignore those you're not. You can then merge the changes, synchronize your files, and generate reports for your records.
COMPARE FILES, FOLDERS
You can compare entire drives and folders at high speed, checking just sizes and modified times. Or, thoroughly verify every file with byte-by-byte comparisons. FTP sites, cloud storage, and zip files are integrated seamlessly, and powerful filters allow you to limit what you see to only what you're interested in.
Once you've found specific files you're interested in, Beyond Compare can intelligently pick the best way to compare and display them. Text files can be viewed and edited with syntax highlighting and comparison rules tweaked specifically for documents, source code, and HTML. The text contents of Microsoft Word .doc and Adobe .pdf files can also be compared but not edited. Data files, executables, binary data, and images all have dedicated viewers as well, so you always have a clear view of the changes.
Comparing folders
Comparing text files
3-WAY MERGE
Beyond Compare's merge view allows you to combine changes from two versions of a file or folder into a single output. Its intelligent approach allows you to quickly accept most changes while carefully examining conflicts. Color coding and section highlighting allow you to accept, reject, or combine changes, simply and easily. When merging files you can change any line in the output with the built-in syntax-highlighting editor. By using Beyond Compare's powerful file type support and ability to favor changes from one file, you can trivially accept many changes without even seeing them.
You can use Beyond Compare directly from most version control systems, giving you all of the powerful comparing and merging support you need when you need it most. Integrated source control commands are also available, allowing you to check in and check out files without interrupting your work.
3-way folder merge
3-way text merge
SYNCHRONIZE FOLDERS
Beyond Compare's intuitive Folder Sync interface lets you reconcile differences in your data automatically. You can efficiently update your laptop, backup your computer, or manage your website, and Beyond Compare will handle all the details. You can copy to and from disks, FTP servers, and zip files, all using the same interface. Anything you don't want affected can be easily filtered out, and all of the powerful comparison techniques are available, making the backup as fast or robust as you need.
You can automate repetitive tasks using a flexible scripting language, and any script can be called from the command line, allowing you to schedule your syncs for when it's most convenient.
Folder Sync
Access Data Anywhere
Beyond Compare is Agile. Our virtual file system connects you to your data transparently, whether it's local or remote.
MULTI-PLATFORM
Beyond Compare is available wherever you are, on Windows, Linux, and now OS X. Fast, with a native look and feel, and enhanced for each platform with the power to do everything you need it to.
ZIP
Zip files and other archive types can be expanded in-place to compare and update their contents, as easily as any other folder. It handles many popular formats, including tar, gzip, bzip2, Microsoft CAB, WinRAR, and, new to v4 for Windows, Zipx, 7-zip, and IMG/ISO disk images.
FTP, SFTP, FTPS
Update your website or make an offset backup; you don't need a separate FTP client. Beyond Compare can connect to FTP, FTP over SSL, and SFTP (SSH) servers and compare, merge, or sync changes with the same commands you're used to. It has saved profiles for quicker access and supports multiple simultaneous connections to speed everything up.
(Secure connections are a Pro Edition feature.)
MEDIA DEVICES
It is now easier to define unimportant text in your Text Compares. Define unimportant terms directly from the Rules dialog, rather than having to edit your file formats.
SUBVERSION
Compare your local Subversion working directory directly against a remote repository without creating a second checkout. Multiple branches and past revisions are supported too, to make merging branches a snap.
CLOUD STORAGE
Organize your cloud storage, whether on a WebDAV server or Amazon S3. Grab a few files from Dropbox when you don't have the full client installed. Beyond Compare makes it easy no matter where your data is.
Specialized Viewers
Beyond Compare is Multifaceted. Beyond Compare includes built-in comparison viewers for a variety of data types. Compare .csv data, Microsoft Excel workbooks, and HTML tables in a Table Compare session. Compare images in a Picture Compare session.
TEXT COMPARE
This is a comparison of two source code files. Specific differences are marked with red text, and the entire line is given a light red background to indicate the presence of a difference. Gutter buttons and hotkeys let you quickly copy sections of code from one side to the other.
3-WAY TEXT MERGE
This is a comparison of three files at the top and the merged, editable output at the bottom. The center file is the common ancestor of the two later versions. Left and right changes are automatically included in the output.
TABLE COMPARE
Delimited data files can be compared cell-by-cell in a Table Compare session. Data can be sorted and aligned on key fields, and unimportant columns can be ignored.
PICTURE COMPARE
The Picture Compare view shows images side-by-side with their differences highlighted. Various types of image files can be compared.
FOLDER COMPARE
Compare folders side-by-side in a familiar Explorer style. Differences are highlighted in color.
FOLDER SYNC
A dedicated Folder Sync session is useful for synchronizing folders. The preview pane clearly shows the operations that will be performed.
3-WAY FOLDER MERGE
Three-way merging now extends to folders. Compare independent changes against a common ancestor to quickly merge your changes with someone else's. It makes merging your customizations into a new release a snap.
HEX COMPARE
The Hex Compare view shows differences byte-by-byte in a typical hex dump layout.
REGISTRY COMPARE
The Registry Compare view compares local and remote live registries as well as registry exports.
EXECUTABLE COMPARE
The Version Compare view compares executable files (such as .exe and .dll) and shows differences in version information. Version Compare is a Windows feature.
MP3 COMPARE
The MP3 Compare view compares mp3 files, showing differences in tags.
Specialized Viewers
Pro Edition features are marked
- General Features
- Responsive, multi-threaded interface
- Multiple windows with tabs for each comparison
- Integrated into Explorer (Windows), Finder (OS X), and various Linux shells
- Save comparisons as sessions to easily load them later
- Automatically save sessions when closing them
- Save workspaces containing all open windows and sessions
- Home view with easy access to viewers and saved sessions
- View Unix patch files as a side-by-side comparison
- Text editor
- Script processor for automating tasks
- Command line interface
- Supports high DPI (retina) displays
- Automatic check for updates
- Drag & drop to start comparisons
- Customizable fonts, colors, and keyboard shortcuts
- Extensive context-sensitive help
- Dedicated support staff available via email, phone, and forums.
- Compare files
- Side-by-side display
- Color highlighting of differences within lines
- Display filters to show only differences
- Jump to next/previous difference within file or folder
- Printed and HTML comparison reports
- Unicode and MBCS support
- Thumbnail overview of comparison
- Can convert files before comparing them
- Compare files or clipboard contents
- Automatic backups when saving
- Text Compare
- Inline editing with dynamic recomparison
- Syntax highlighting
- C, C++, C#, Objective-C
- Java
- SQL
- Delphi, Pascal
- Python
- Visual Basic
- XML
- Many more built in and available online
- Ignore unimportant differences
- Comments
- Whitespace
- Delimited strings
- Regular expressions
- Character case
- Page headers
- Columns
- Line terminator style
- Manually ignore selection
- Ignore replaced text and renamed identifiers
- Flexible alignment
- Aligns similar lines
- Multiple alignment styles
- Optionally suppress alignment of differences
- Manually align changes or break alignments
- 3-way merge with output panel
- Merges changes automatically
- Marks conflicting sections
- Take whole difference sections or selections
- Find & replace
- Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, and Rich Text converted to text automatically
- Adaptive gutter buttons for copying sections
- Formatted HTML view
- View Delphi binary form files as text
- Line details as text, hex, or with character alignment
- Compare files with different formats
- Bookmarks
- Table Compare
- Grid view
- Inline editing with dynamic recomparison
- Compare CSV, tab delimited, HTML tables, and Excel worksheets
- Ignore differences within numeric or date tolerances
- Ignore or hide unimportant columns
- Align based on key columns or all columns
- Rearrange columns to compare files in different orders
- Sort data before comparing
- Binary Compare
- Display binary files as hex
- Inline editing with dynamic recomparison
- Fast byte-by-byte alignment
- Limit display to differences
- Wrap lines to display
- Find & Replace
- Registry Compare
- Local and remote registry hives
- Registry exports (.reg)
- Inline editing
- Recursively expand keys in-place
- Picture Compare
- Many picture formats
- Flip, rotate, and scale images
- Multiple comparison types
- Thumbnail of pixels around the mouse cursor
- Ignore differences within an RGB tolerance
- Ignore replaced colors
- Zoom to show entire image automatically
- Other Comparisons
- Compare .exe version information
- Compare MP3 tags
- Can use third-party comparison utilities for unsupported files
- Compare .exe version information
- Compare Folders
- Compare folders side-by-side
- Color highlighting of differences
- Automatically compare subfolders and expand them in place
- Display filters to show added, modified, or matching files and folders
- Flexible comparison criteria
- Last modified time
- Size
- Filename case
- DOS attributes
- File content (CRC32, byte-byte-byte, file format specific, or exe/dll versions)
- Ignore selection
- Exclusion filters
- File and folder names
- Sizes
- Last modified times
- File content
- DOS and Unix attributes
- Dedicated synchronization commands
- Powerful file operations
- Copy, Move, Delete, Rename, Change Attributes, Set Last Modified Time
- Multiple operations can run in the background
- Pause running operations
- 3-way folder merge
- Merge to a separate output location or overwrite one of the inputs
- Automatically merge text files
- Ignore folder structure
- Printed and HTML comparison reports
- Link an HTML folder comparison report to individual file comparison reports
- Optionally follow symbolic links and NTFS junction points
- Align filenames with different extensions
- Align filenames using wildcard masks (e.g., "Apples*" => "Bananas*")
- Align filenames with different Unicode normalization forms (OS X vs Windows)
- Copy NTFS ACLs and DOS short (8.3) filename aliases
- Virtual File System
- Local and network drives
- Remote SMB servers (\\server)
- FTP servers
- Named profiles
- Multiple simultaneous connections
- Resume interrupted transfers
- Secure FTP servers (FTP over SSL and SSH SFTP)
- Password, private key, keyboard interactive, or SSH agent authentication
- Cloud storage
- WebDAV
- Amazon S3
- Dropbox
- OneDrive
- Remote Subversion repositories
- Portable media devices (Android phones, MP3 players, cameras)
- Archive Files
- Compare and modify without extracting to a temporary location
- Compare as a file or expand as a folder
- Create, read, and modify
- 7-zip
- Zip
- Zipx, with read-only support for Bzip2, PPMd, LZMA, WavPack, and JPEG compression
- Tar
- Gzip
- Bzip2
- 7-zip
- Read only
- Deb
- Rpm
- Rar
- Disk images (.img, .iso)
- Microsoft Cab
- Compiled Help (.chm)
- Total Commander packer plugins
- Many more
- Deb
- Save filesystem snapshots without content
- Version Control
- Launch comparisons from all major version control systems
- Checkin/checkout files via MSSCCI provider
- Compares Subversion repositories
