What file comparison tool can I use under OS X?

Question

My favorite file comparison tool was Beyond Compare but since I recently switched to OS X, i'm no longer able to use it and I'm looking for an alternative, preferably a free one.

Update: I made the mistake not to specify that I am also looking for a tool that does directory comparison, not only files. Because this could make the already answers invalid I made another question for this What directory comparison tools can I use on OS X?

Answer 1

FileMerge is bundled with XCode, but I prefer Kaleidoscope which is not free.

Answer 2

This is an aggregation of the answers posted on SO's deleted clone, Graphical diff for Mac OS X. It includes links to each product, and the current price since last edit in USD.

Note that any links to SO will only be visible to users who can view deleted content, which requires either moderator privileges or 10k reputation on that site.

• Sourcegear's DiffMerge, free
• Joachim Eibl's KDiff3, free
• Black Pixel's Kaleidoscope, $69.99
• Bare Bones Software's TextWrangler, free
• Araxis's Merge, $129 + $29/year
• Deltopia's DeltaWalker, $39.95/$75.95
• Kai Willadsen's Meld, free
• Weipin Xia's DiffFork, $26
• Biscade's RoaringDiff, free
• tkdiff, free

There were some other suggestions, which were not diff tools in their own right, which I will list below:

• It (Beyond Compare) runs well in Wine, but I miss the shell integration. - Danyal Aytekin, May 11 '12, 13:01
• Eclipse also has a fairly decent comparison mechanism. - JeeBee, Oct 9 '08, 12:45
• P4Merge that comes with Perforce is pretty good and comes for free with perforce client. Both terminal and GUI version. - amok, Jul 7 '10, 23:19
• I had to use Vim because most of diffs mentioned here do not understand UTF-8. - user184880, Oct 6 '09, 9:56

That about wraps up that thread's merge into this one, as covered here.

Answer 3

I use Kaleidoscope. Or just plain, old diff from the CLI

Answer 4

Changes.app has a great reputation and lots of features. Kaleidoscope is great too, and has a beautifully designed UI.

It's also worth mentioning if you're doing programming that Xcode 4 has visual diff tools built in now too.

Answer 5

DiffMerge from Sourcegear is simple and free.

Answer 6

You can use diff if you're using the command-line.

Answer 7

There's also DeltaWalker.

It's $40, and there's a trial available.

Answer 8

I use Folder Sync It costs $8.99 on the Mac App Store. It works really nicely.

Answer 9

It is not great, but the FileMerge bundled with the OS can be launched from the command line as opendiff a.txt b.txt.

Answer 10

There are a great many comparison tools available. Many do directories and files. Some even perform as merge tools (2 and 3 way). Of these some have already been mentioned in other answers and your choice will depend on what features you require, and how much you are prepared to pay for the tool. There is a good Wikipedia page with a comparison of many of the better known ones.