Introduction

Diffoniq displays the differences between two files, two directories or two archives, side by side. Common and different sections are clearly marked with separator lines and colors, the display is scrollable in all directions, the separator line in the middle can be dragged to see more of either side, and you can jump between common and different sections. Beyond viewing, differences can be merged and written back to disk, folders can be synchronized, and any comparison can be exported as a report.

Highlights: renamed and moved files are detected and paired automatically · a persistent content-hash cache makes repeat comparisons of large trees almost instant · archives behave like folders, even nested inside each other · converters make PDF and Office documents comparable · folder synchronization and reports also run headless, for scripts and scheduled tasks.

What Diffoniq compares

Text files	Side by side, with inline differences highlighted within changed lines. Unicode and legacy encodings as well as UNIX and DOS line endings are recognized automatically and preserved when modified files are written back.
Directories	Recursive tree comparison with sortable columns and per-pair status (see Directory Listing). Renamed and moved files are detected and paired instead of appearing as unrelated additions and deletions. What counts as a difference is adjustable through the comparison options (ignore date, time, case, …) and include/exclude filters.
Archives	ZIP, 7-Zip, tar, RAR, ISO and other common formats open like folders: archive against archive, archive against directory, and archives nested inside archives to any depth. Renamed archives are recognized by their content.
Images	Picture files are shown side by side as images, with their dimensions and format in the header.
Programs	Executables and DLLs are compared by their embedded version information plus a content hash, so byte-different builds with identical version resources still show up.
Other formats	Converters run an external program to turn formats Diffoniq cannot read itself — PDF documents, Word files, databases — into comparable text. Anything else can be checked byte by byte with the binary comparison.

Working with the differences

Navigate from difference to difference, or hide the matching areas to see only what changed.
Merge: mark an area of lines on one or both sides, copy it to the clipboard, paste clipboard lines into a marked area, or drag a marked area onto the corresponding area of the other side — then write the result back with Save Modifications. Every step can be undone and redone.
Find text in either side and jump to a line.
Hand it over: export a report as self-contained HTML, plain text or machine-readable JSON, print the comparison, or copy marked lines to the clipboard.

Built for large directory trees

Pairs with equal size and date are verified by content in the background while you browse — per-row progress bars show the remaining work (see Binary Comparison).
The content-hash cache remembers those results between runs, so repeat comparisons of large trees — a source tree against yesterday’s backup, a NAS share against its mirror — are almost instant.

Synchronize and automate

Folder synchronization turns a directory comparison into action: copy or delete in either direction, interactively or headless from the command line, with a dry run by default.
Command line arguments open a comparison directly and set options for it; headless modes write reports and run synchronizations without showing a window.
Integration: started with two path arguments, Diffoniq works as the external diff viewer of version control clients, IDEs and file managers — no plugin needed.

For a tour of the menus and the display, continue with Usage; the keyboard and mouse references list every shortcut and gesture.

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