Troubleshooting the differences between two files can be a hassle. Fortunately there are several text file comparison tools that make it easy to quickly see the differences between two files.
Text Comparison for macOS
BBEdit has long been one of my favorite text editing tools for macOS. It includes so many powerful features in the free version and even more if you opt to use the paid version. The text comparison in the free version does a great job of highlighting the differences in text files of any size. Below you can see a simple example in the screen shot to illustrate the point.
The top two panes are side by side comparisons of two files. The bottom pane lets you highlight the individual differences and choose if you want to merge the differnces between the documents.
This text file compare functionality is easily accessed from the Search menu in BBEdit in the Find Differences menu item.
Finding Differences in Documents on Windows
Notepad++ has long been one of the first things I install on a new Windows computer. I still can’t imagine living without it. In all my years using Windows, it’s surprising Microsoft didn’t add similar functionality as a default option somewhere along the way. Like BBEdit for macOS, Notepad++ has so many great text processing tools. One Notepad++ this difference identification is called Compare. It’s found in the Plugins menu.
You can see a short tutorial on how to do this below:
If you work with lots of text, both of these are invaluable solutions for finding changes between document versions. By using text file compare functionality in either of these apps, you can save yourself a bunch of time. They are also significant upgrades from Notepad on Windows and TextEdit on macOS, providing far more than text file comparison.
