NextDiff
Free File, Text and Folder Comparison Tool for Windows
Current version: 1.0 | Freeware for Windows 10 & 11
NextDiff is a free Windows comparison tool designed to help you quickly find differences between two files, text documents, source code files, or folders.
Key Features
- Free file comparison software for Windows
- Side-by-side text file comparison
- Line-by-line and in-line changed text highlighting
- Compare source code, logs, scripts, configuration files, and documents
- Compare folders and subfolders
- Detect files that exist only on one side
- Mark newer files during folder comparison
- Copy differences from left to right or right to left
- Edit text directly inside the comparison view
- Undo recent merge or edit actions
- Navigate to first, previous, next, and last difference
- Ignore case, whitespace, leading/trailing spaces, and blank lines
- Supports ANSI, ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-8 BOM, and UTF-16 text files
- Optional Apache Tika support for PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX comparison
- Customizable colors, fonts, line numbers, and grid display
- Free for personal and commercial use
Compare Text Files Side by Side
NextDiff displays two files in a clear two-column comparison view, making it easy to identify added, removed, changed, and identical lines. Differences are highlighted with customizable colors, and changed text inside a line is marked separately so you can quickly spot the exact modified words or characters.
The program supports common text encodings, including ANSI/ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-8 with BOM, UTF-16 LE, and UTF-16 BE. This makes it useful for comparing source code, scripts, logs, INI files, XML, JSON, HTML, CSV, TXT files, and many other plain-text formats.
Compare Complex Documents with Apache Tika
For supported complex document formats, NextDiff can use Apache Tika text extraction to compare readable content from files such as PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX and other document types. This allows you to compare the extracted text from documents that are not simple plain-text files.
Smart Difference Navigation
NextDiff includes convenient navigation controls that let you jump directly to the first, previous, next, or last difference. The comparison status also shows useful summary information, including the number of lines in each file, how many lines are equal, the percentage of matching lines, and the number of different lines.
Edit and Merge Changes
NextDiff is more than a passive file viewer. You can edit text directly inside the comparison grid by double-clicking a cell or using the keyboard. The program also includes merge actions that allow you to copy a difference from left to right or from right to left. You can copy individual difference blocks or replace all differences on one side with the content from the other side. Undo support helps you safely reverse recent merge changes.
Folder Comparison
NextDiff can compare two folders, including files inside subfolders. Folder comparison helps you see which files exist only on the left side, which files exist only on the right side, and which files appear different. When files are different, NextDiff can also mark the newer file, making it easier to decide which version should be reviewed or copied manually.
Flexible Comparison Options
NextDiff includes several comparison settings to help you focus on meaningful changes. You can ignore case differences, ignore all whitespace, ignore changes in whitespace amount, ignore leading or trailing whitespace, and ignore blank lines.
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