WinMerge

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WinMerge
Developer	WinMerge Development Team
Release	November 20, 2000; 25 years ago (2000-11-20)
Stable release	2.16.58.2 (2026.08)  (27 August 2026) [±]
Written in	C++
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Available in	Multilingual
Type	Data comparison
License	GPL
Website	winmerge.org
Repository	github.com/WinMerge/winmerge

WinMerge is a free software tool for data comparison and merging of text-like files. It is useful for determining what has changed between versions, and then merging changes between versions.

WinMerge runs on Microsoft Windows.

Features

• Visual differencing and merging of text files
• Flexible editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers, and word-wrap
• Handles DOS, Unix, and Mac text file formats
• Unicode support (as of version 2.8.0, UTF-8 files are correctly read without a BOM)
• Difference pane shows current difference in two vertical panes
• Location pane shows map of files compared
• Highlights differences inside lines in file compare
• Can also generate HTML report with differences highlighted
• Regular expression-based file filters in directory compare allow excluding and including items
• Moved lines detection in file compare
• Ability to ignore whitespace and letter case changes
• Creates patch files
• Shell integration (supports 64-bit Windows versions)
• Rudimentary Visual SourceSafe and IBM DevOps Code ClearCase integration
• Archive file support using 7-Zip
• Plug-ins
• Language localization via plain-text PO files
• Online manual and installed HTML help manual
• Generates normal, context, and unified patches.

Codebases and forks

WinMerge 2011 (discontinued) Developer jtuc Release December 3, 2011; 14 years ago (2011-12-03) Preview release 2011.009.217 / May 26, 2019; 7 years ago (2019-05-26) Written in C++ Operating system Microsoft Windows Available in Multilingual Type Data comparison License GPL Website bitbucket.org/jtuc/winmerge2011 Repository bitbucket.org/jtuc/winmerge2011

WinMerge 2011 Developer datadiode Release December 3, 2011; 14 years ago (2011-12-03) Preview release 0.2011.211.170 / June 5, 2021; 5 years ago (2021-06-05) Written in C++ Operating system Microsoft Windows Available in Multilingual Type Data comparison License GPL Website github.com/datadiode/winmerge2011 Repository github.com/datadiode/winmerge2011

For a planned development of version 3.x no commits have been made to the 3.0 codebase since 2011.

In 2011 a fork of the 2.x codebase titled "WinMerge 2011" was created. This new branch has continued to see active feature and bug fix development. It has also removed ATL/MFC dependencies so that WinMerge can be built using the free Visual C++ Express editions.

See also

• Comparison of file comparison tools

References

External links

• Official website
• WinMerge on SourceForge

• WinMerge Portable
• Sdottaka's WinMerge on BitBucket and on GitHub (an active^{[2017][update]} fork with additional features and Japanese language support) (gone)
• WinMerge 2011 on BitBucket Archived 2017-09-16 at the Wayback Machine and on GitHub (an active^{[2017][update]} fork with additional features) (gone)
• 'Compare and merge files and folders with WinMerge' (Lifehacker 2007 article)