Beyond Compare 5 Change Log

5.0.4.30422 - November 25, 2024

Notable Changes

  • Fixed SFTP public key authentication failures when the server has SHA-1 disabled.
  • Fixed Text Merge crash when taking changes on a line that is longer than the maximum line length.
  • Added per-sheet alignment settings for Table Compare.
  • Switched Table Compare "Copy to Left/Right" (Ctrl+L/R) back to copying rows instead of individual cells.
  • Various other tweaks and improvements, primarily in Table Compare.

FTP

  • Fixed SFTP public key authentication failures when the server has SHA-1 disabled.

Hex Compare

  • Clicking on the "Byte address = 000000000" menu item now copies the address to the clipboard.

Home View

  • Sticker now has a hint to show the URL it will visit when clicked.

Picture Compare

  • Fixed "Swap Sides" failing to update left and right image controls.

Table Compare

  • Switched "Copy to Left/Right" back to copying rows instead of individual cells. "Copy Cell to Left/Right" are still independently available commands.
  • Added per-sheet alignment settings.
  • Added ability to override region settings on a per-side basis from the File Info bar.
  • Added "Never align differences" and "Skew tolerance" alignment options.
  • Added "Sheet" option to "Go To" dialog.
  • Removed "Resize Column to Fit" menu item in favor of a "Detect" option in the "Resize Column" dialog.
  • Fixed header context menu handling when all columns are hidden.
  • Improved difference handling of missing cells.
  • Removed "New" and "Delete" commands from "Columns" and "Sheets" session settings pages.
  • Right clicking on a sheet tab activates that tab.
  • Minor UI tweaks
    • Adjusted menu item order in header context menu.
    • Tweaked layout of Session Settings > Columns and Sheets pages.
    • Tweaked Column handling UI.

Text Views

  • Tweaked "Alignment" session settings layout.

Crashes

  • Fixed Text Merge crash when taking changes on a line that is longer than the maximum line length.

5.0.3.30258 - October 24, 2024

Notable Changes

  • Windows: Significantly improved Explorer context menu extension, including re-adding main menu/submenu configuration where possible, support for processes running as Administrator, and limited ARM64 support.
  • Linux: Fixed text editor width calculations for monospace fonts.
  • Other minor fixes and enhancements.

Appearance

  • Windows: Fixed checkbox lists' dotted level lines showing as black-on-black in dark mode.

Folder Compare

  • macOS: Fixed status bar showing free disk space as 0 bytes on Intel CPUs.
  • Fixed path edit incorrectly showing both the error message and path smushed together after a load error.

Installer

  • Windows: Fixed hang when trying to install the Windows 11 Explorer context menu if calling PowerShell generates unexpected output.
  • Windows: Install/uninstall log now includes details of the shell extension install.
  • Windows: Removed "Delete all Beyond Compare 5 settings" checkbox in the uninstaller's confirmation dialog when doing an "All Users" uninstall.
  • Windows: Fixed uninstaller not closing BCClipboard automatically.
  • Windows: Made shell extension upgrade process for non-admin installs more robust.
  • Windows: Updated Inno Setup to 6.3.3.

Misc

  • Linux: Fixed "File Formats" dialog not remembering the checkbox state for enabled file formats.

Table Compare

  • Fixed auto-sized widths for ignored unimportant columns.
  • Fixed copy to clipboard handling of cells containing line endings or a delimiter.

Text Views

  • Linux: Fixed width calculations for monospace fonts.

Windows Explorer Context Menu Extension

  • Re-added ability to configure menu items to appear directly on the top level menu or in a "Beyond Compare" submenu when shown on the Windows 10, in Windows 11's "Show More Options" menu, and in third-party applications.
  • Fixed extension not appearing in "Run As Administrator" processes on Windows 11 (e.g., Total Commander).
  • Fixed extension not showing in Windows 11 for ARM64 "Show More Options" menu. Supporting the top-level menu is still a goal, but we're waiting on Delphi's ARM64 compiler.
  • Fixed installing shell extension on Windows 11 21H1 and 21H2. Upgrades from 5.0.2 or earlier will need to turn on the extension in the Options dialog or manually uninstall/reinstall to enable it.
  • Fixed "Compare to ..." caption incorrectly showing the entire path for files/folders on portable media devices (MTP).
  • Fixed comparing files on portable devices (MTP) when Explorer's "Show > File name extensions" option is turned off.
  • Fixed menu items not appearing in Libraries virtual folders in cases where BC4 did.
  • Fixed menu items incorrectly appearing on unsupported virtual folders (e.g., "Libraries") and then trying to open BC with an invalid path.
  • Fixed duplicate menu items when showing context menu for network servers/shares in Explorer's navigation treeview.
  • Fixed using "Select Left" on a drive root showing the second menu as 'Compare to ""'.
  • Fixed using "Select Left" on a file and then selecting a drive root that contains a matching filename showing the second menu as 'Compare to \file.ext' instead of 'Compare to C:\file.ext'.
  • Fixed ability for a non-admin user to toggle off and on the Win11 context menu after installing for all users.
  • Fixed icons appearing with a solid black background when running in an ARM64 process or when selecting files on portable media devices.
  • Recreated Select Left/Center arrow icons to be more in line with the v4 appearance.

5.0.2.30045 - August 27, 2024

Notable Changes

  • Added "Side" option to Folder Compare "Alignment Override" settings to match from right to left.
  • General fixes and stability improvements.

File Views

  • Fixed updating sided display filters when using "Swap Sides".

Folder Compare

  • Added "Side" option to "Alignment Override" settings to match from right to left in addition to existing left to right remapping.
  • Fixed "Swap Sides" to update Sort Side and Alignment Override settings.

FTP

  • Fixed "timeout (110)" errors when connecting to SFTP servers that expect the client to send the welcome packet first.
  • Fixed SFTP corruption when uploading to OpenSSH for Windows.

Installer

  • Windows: Fixed installer putting the Start Menu icon in the top-level Start Menu folder rather than the Start Menu\Programs subfolder.

Misc

  • Linux: Fixed missing UTF-8/UTF-16 options in file encoding dropdowns.
  • macOS: Fixed number/decimal separator showing as ? for some regions.
  • macOS: Fixed path edit autocomplete in main comparison windows.
  • Fixed reading text lines longer than 65536 characters in various places.

Picture Compare

  • Fixed changing tolerance after the initial comparison is done to update the comparison results.

Registry Compare

  • Fixed parse error for .reg files with lines longer than 65536 characters.

Table Compare

  • Fixed canceling "Go To" and "Resize Column" dialogs.
  • Fixed comparing region settings.
  • Fixed MS Excel Workbook comparisons to use system's regional settings instead of forcing English ones.
  • Fixed displaying negative numbers as "-x" instead of "(x)".
  • Fixed detection of numbers to require a digit before or after the decimal separator.
  • Fixed HTML reports formatting the first sheet's name differently than the rest.

Text Compare

  • Fixed "Next Difference" to not skip missing lines.

Crashes

  • Linux: Fixed crash/hang when generating a report.
  • Fixed crash when using "Swap Sides" in Media and Version Compare when there are hidden items.

5.0.1.29877 - July 19, 2024

Notable Changes

  • General Table Compare improvements.
  • Fixed crash/failure when copying NTFS permissions.
  • macOS/Linux: Fixed crash when importing v4 settings.

Archives

  • Updated unrar to v7.1.100.1230 (Windows DLL) and v7.0.9 (macOS/Linux source).
  • macOS: Fixed comparing files in rar archives in file views or using the "Compare Contents" command.

File Formats

  • Fixed crash when comparing Rich Text Format (.rtf) files.

File Views

  • macOS/Linux: Added support for \n, \r, and \t escape sequences in regular expression replacement strings.
  • Fixed "File is being used by another process" error when trying to save a file that originally included only a UTF-8 byte order mark.

Folder Compare

  • Windows: Fixed crash/failure when copying NTFS permissions.
  • macOS/Linux: Fixed Session Settings > Other Filters > Larger Than/Smaller Than filters ignoring the KB/MB/GB combobox.

Misc

  • Fixed support for importing v5 State settings (e.g., MRU lists, form positions).
  • macOS/Linux: Fixed crash when trying to import v4 settings.
  • macOS: Fixed translated versions showing checkboxes with the original English text.

Table Compare

  • Added "Just current sheet" report option.
  • Added report headers indicating the sheet names.
  • Fixed "Hide Same Columns" hiding everything when loading a single-sided comparison.
  • Fixed crash when generating a report using "Just selection" on sheets past the first.
  • Fixed sheet tab captions not updating when swapping sides.
  • Fixed sheet tabs not recalculating their width when the caption or difference spot changes.
  • Fixed file info bar displaying incorrect or truncated strings.
  • Fixed issues with Info and Report generation for multiple sheets.

Text Views

  • Fixed crash when using Find > Select All twice when the found text exists on the last line of the file.

5.0.0.29773 - July 8, 2024

This is the first official release of Beyond Compare version 5.

Significant New Features

  • Word wrap in Text Compare and Text Merge.
  • Dark mode.
  • Table Compare can compare multiple Excel sheets and has other enhancements.
  • Text Merge manual alignment supports multi-line selections.
  • Windows: Per-monitor DPI scaling.
  • Windows: Explorer context menu integration enhanced and supports Windows 11.
  • macOS: Native Apple M series support and additional performance improvements.
  • Linux: Upgraded to QT 5.

Additional Enhancements

  • Version Compare supports more header fields, and has better MUI and error handling.
  • Media Compare (formerly MP3 compare) has been enhanced and supports additional file types (FLAC, MP3, MP4/AAC).
  • Media Compare, Picture Compare, and Version Compare now launch Hex or Picture Compare when double clicking on tags.
  • "Open Clipboard" command added to Registry Compare, Media Compare, Version Compare, and Text Edit.
  • Added file viewer keyboard shortcuts Ctrl + / ⌘+ and Ctrl - / ⌘- for "Display Font Increase/Decrease" and Picture Compare "Zoom In/Out".
  • Command line now supports using /fv="Hex Compare" for archive files.
  • File viewer encoding auto-detection now matches against the entire file instead of just the first 64KB.
  • Fixed reading BC scripts saved as UTF-8 without a byte order mark.
  • Mouse wheel scrolls the control under the mouse cursor rather than the one that has focus.
  • Windows: "Register for All Users" option will now store the key in C:\ProgramData (%AllUsersProfile%) instead of Program Files so it doesn't need to show a UAC prompt.
  • Windows/Linux: Titlebars now show "Administrator:" or "(Root Session)" when run elevated.
  • Windows: Loading a base folder that contains a Windows shortcut file named "target.lnk" will no longer automatically redirect to the target of that shortcut.
  • Windows: Fixed various issues with control and menu appearance on Windows 11.
  • macOS: Copies within a single file system now make linked copy-on-write clones, so the file data isn't duplicated until one of them changes.
  • Linux: Added KDE6 file manager integration. Thank you to Benjamin Robin.

Default Settings Changed

  • Windows: File views now assume UTF-8 instead of ANSI encoding for files unless it detects extended characters.
  • FTP/FTPS/SFTP use binary transfers for all files instead of doing ASCII ones for some file types. The previous "Auto" behavior still exists as an option.
  • FTP/FTPS/SFTP now uses UTF-8 for command/filename encoding by default. Previous "Detect" behavior can be changed in the profile's "Server > Encoding" tab.
  • Deleting in folder compare/sync will now use the recycle bin by default.
  • Windows: "Tools > Source Control" dialog (MSSCCI integration) is now hidden by default since most version control systems no longer support it. It can be manually re-enabled in "Options > Toolbars, etc".
  • Increased "Binary size for binary compare" from 65KB to 4MB.
  • "Limit next difference files to current folder" is now off by default.
  • Added "Ignore Same", "Favor Left", and "Favor Right" buttons to Text Merge toolbar.
  • Removed Text Compare "Full Edit" toggle. Full editing support is always enabled.

Table Compare

  • Autodetection of file formatting and column type has been improved.
  • Multiple MS Excel sheets and multiple HTML tables can be compared with tabs.
  • Default comparison uses a standard alignment rather than a sorted one.
  • Individual cells are colored based on their differences.
  • CSV files support editing on a cell-by-cell basis.

Windows Explorer context menu extension

  • Works in the top-level menu in Windows 11.
  • Added "Compare Using Hex Compare" for archive files.
  • Added support for right clicking on the desktop or in the background of a folder view to act on that folder.
  • Using "Select Left File" and then right clicking on a folder now supports comparing a file of the same name within that folder.
  • "Edit" command is now enabled for a selection of up to 15 files.
  • Added "View Patch", "Compare to Clipboard", and "Open for Compare" commands.

Installers

  • Windows: Added /DisableUpdates switch to disable check for updates for the current user or all users.
  • Windows: Install mode prompt (All Users, Current User, Portable) is now shown before the UAC prompt, so it no longer needs admin privileges for non-admin installs.
  • Windows: "All Users" installs no longer prompt to run the Clipboard Compare on startup. Previously this only affected the installing user.
  • Windows: Portable installs will now default to 64-bit versions on 64-bit Windows. Silent installs can use the /32 switch to force a 32-bit version.
  • Linux: Creating an empty /etc/default/bcompare file will prevent the .deb package from adding the Beyond Compare repository and public signing key to the system configuration.
  • Linux: Uninstalling the .deb package will now remove the repository and public signing key configuration files if they were added automatically.

Picture Compare

  • Mouse now uses a precise + cursor when over images and the two images that the mouse isn't over show smaller cursors in the same relative positions.
  • Mouse wheel scrolls the view rather than zooming. Shift+Wheel will scroll horizontally and Ctrl+Wheel will zoom in and out.

FTP/FTPS/SFTP

  • Replaced SFTP "Force faster uploads to older OpenSSH servers" profile option with "Use aggressive uploads to OpenSSH servers" one that affects all OpenSSH versions, not just v3.9 and earlier.
  • SSH public/private key generation in Profiles dialog now supports ed25519 and EcDSA keys and will generate ed25519 keys by default.
  • SSH keyboard interactive authentication now combines multiple prompts into a single dialog.