Beyond Compare 5 Change Log

5.0.5.30614 - January 15, 2025

Notable Changes

  • Improved Table Compare user interface for column alignment.
  • SFTP profile's "Use aggressive uploads to OpenSSH servers" option is now turned off by default.
  • Windows: Explorer context menu's "Hide 'Select Left' if there is already a saved selection" option now only controls the Windows 11 top-level menu.
  • Updated third party libraries.
  • Various other fixes and improvements.

Cloud Services

  • Fixed authentication errors when uploading/downloading from a OneDrive account.

File Formats

  • Fixed conversion errors when loading files saved with MS Word 2010.

FTP

  • Changed default for SFTP profile's "Use aggressive uploads to OpenSSH servers" option to be disabled by default since it can cause data corruption on some servers.

Installer

  • Upgrading the shell extension no longer triggers the installer to ask for a reboot. Explorer will still use the old version until it's been restarted or logged out, and uninstalling BC then reinstalling still requires a reboot between them.

Misc

  • macOS: Improved overly fast scrolling speed when scrolling using a touchpad or Magic Mouse.
  • macOS: Fixed file sizes displaying separators as ? depending on the regional settings.
  • macOS: File sizes will display separators at native grouping frequency instead of always using 3 digit groupings (e.g., India).
  • Fixed sessions incorrectly prompting to save changes when changing things like display filters that should be saved automatically.
  • Session Settings dialog's Scope edit is now center aligned vertically with the [ Ok ] button.

Table Compare

  • Added alignment mode combobox to Session Settings pages with choices of "Unaligned", "Align by left name", "Align by right name", and "Custom alignment". Replaces existing "Left file is source" and "Detect alignment" checkboxes.
  • Empty cells compared to missing cells is now considered an unimportant difference.
  • Changing alignment mode session setting updates "Left file" and "Right file" columns in grid.
  • Fixed column headers incorrectly sorting with the rest of the data.
  • Fixed footer tab control displaying extra "-" tabs when the session settings have sheet alignment customizations for sheets that don't exist.
  • Fixed comparisons with key columns that don't exist resulting in a random row alignment.
  • Fixed to show footer tab control when first sheets on each side are not aligned and files do not support sheets.

Third Party Libraries

  • Updated 7-zip to 24.09.
  • Updated FastMM to v4.993+.
  • Windows: Updated FlexCel to v7.22.1.
  • Windows: Updated madExcept to v5.1.5.
  • Windows/macOS: Updated pdftotext to v4.05.
  • Updated SMWord to v1.50(b34).
  • macOS: Updated LetsMove to v1.25.

Windows Explorer Context Menu Extension

  • "Hide 'Select Left' if there is already a saved selection" option now only controls the Windows 11 top-level menu, so the "Show More Options" menu can still be used to change it after an incorrect selection.
  • When file system directories are selected, menu items will now appear higher in the Windows 10 and "Show More Options" menus, matching where they appear when files are selected.
  • Fixed support for "Compare Using" submenu translations.
  • Reduced cases where Windows 11 top-level menu will clip menu item captions.
  • Launching a compare will now clear saved paths for both file and folder selections.

Crashes

  • macOS: Fixed startup crash.

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.