Beyond Compare 4 Change Log

4.4.7.28397 - October 19, 2023

Notable Changes

macOS: Fixed blurry text on Intel CPU systems with retina displays running macOS 14 Sonoma.
Linux: Fixed typo in RPM uninstall script in 4.4.5 and 4.4.6. To upgrade/uninstall those versions see https://www.scootersoftware.com/kb/linuxpreun
Fixed hex compare incorrectly marking single matches as different.
General updates and stability fixes.

File Formats

Windows: - Updated pdftotext to v4.04.

Folder Compare

Linux: Updated smb:// support for KDE and DBUS integration.

Hex Compare

Fixed incorrectly marking single matches as different.

Installer

Linux: RPM installer no longer tries to import our GPG key automatically.
Linux: Updated RPM repository GPG key for Fedora 38 compatibility.
Linux: Fixed typo in rpm pre-uninstall script.

Misc

macOS: Fixed blurry text on Intel CPU systems with retina displays running macOS 14 Sonoma.
macOS: Fixed "Beyond Compare" top level menu item not appearing in macOS Sonoma betas.
Windows: Fixed showing menu items as checked on Windows 11.

Options

Windows: - Fixed Options dialog "Explorer Integration" saying it's a portable install if BC was installed and registered by an administrator and is run by a limited user.

Crashes

Linux: Fixed crash when simultaneously running multiple command line quick compares.

4.4.6.27483 - March 6, 2023

macOS: Improved scrolling speed on M series hardware running macOS 13, but editing performance can be slower. We're still working on additional improvements.

4.4.5.27371 - February 3, 2023

Notable Changes

Fixed toggling "Include hidden items" checkbox in file operation confirmations to no longer reset the selected sides.
macOS: Improved exceptionally poor performance on 4K+ displays with high bit depths (e.g., Studio Displays or built-in retina MacBook screens).
Linux: Updated Nautilus Context Menu to Support Gnome 43 / Nautilus API 4.0.
Various other fixes and stability improvements.

File Formats

Unix: Fixed PDF conversion failing when filenames contain a parenthesis.

Folder Compare

Fixed toggling "Include hidden items" checkbox in file operation confirmations to no longer reset the selected sides.

FTP

Unix: SFTP connections now check ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 in addition to id_rsa and id_dsa.

Hex Compare

Improved handling of important difference color and font settings.

Installer

Linux: Updated location of GPG public signing key for .deb installer.
Linux: Updated RPM signature to use SHA256.

Misc

macOS: Improved exceptionally poor performance on 4K+ displays with high bit depths (e.g., Studio Displays or built-in retina MacBook screens).
Linux: Updated Nautilus Context Menu to Support Gnome 43 / Nautilus API 4.0.
macOS: Fixed memory leak.

Crashes

macOS: Fixed crash when cancelling "Install command line tools" prompt.
Unix: Fixed crash when comparing .doc files.
Windows: Fixed crash in 64-bit Registry Compare when comparing large data sets.

4.4.4.27058 - November 4, 2022

Notable Changes

macOS: Fixed scrolling and redrawing issues in macOS 13.0 Ventura.

Folder Compare

macOS/Linux: Fixed alignment overrides not correctly handling DOS replacement masks that contain numbers.

Text Views

Fixed intermittent incorrect results with lines longer than the maximum line length.

Crashes

Windows: Fixed crashes in the folder browse dialog on 64-bit Windows.

4.4.3.26655 - July 20, 2022

Notable Changes

Windows: Fixed two security vulnerabilities in the .exe installer.
Various stability fixes.

Cloud Services

Dropbox connections now only try to use TLS 1.2 & 1.3.

File Formats

Updated URL for "PDF documents" file format converter.

Installer

Windows: Fixed DLL preloading vulnerability in uninstaller (CVE-2022-36415). Installer will no longer run on Windows XP or Windows Vista.
Windows: BCClipboard.exe is no longer run automatically during silent installs unless launched from Beyond Compare as part of an auto-update (CVE-2022-36414).
Windows: Fixed crash when removing the shell extension in an "Install for current user" install.
Windows: Fixed "Internal error: Failed to expand shell folder constant 'userdesktop'" error when run from a restricted user account.

Misc

macOS: Fixed moving a tab to a new window and then dragging in the toolbar area moving the original parent window instead.
Updated supported OS versions in Windows and Linux README files and updated URLs to use https://.

Picture Compare

macOS: Fixed loading some 64bpp PNGs and improved error handling when an image fails to load.

Table Compare

Windows: Updated Excel .xls/xlsx reading library.

Crashes

macOS: Fixed crash in the crash reporting dialog.

4.4.2.26348 - March 16, 2022

Notable Changes

macOS: Fixed bcomp command line support on macOS 12.3.

4.4.1.26165 - December 20, 2021

Notable Changes

Improved stability and various other fixes, especially in FTP/SFTP connections.

FTP

Added support for PuTTY v3 SSH keys, and enhanced support for other key formats.
Added FTPS profile option to limit TLS version minimum and maximum to handle incompatibilities or increase security.
macOS/Linux: Fixed hang and high CPU usage when using an empty passphrase to try to load a SSH private key file that's encrypted and stored in the new OpenSSH private key format.
Fixed parsing z/OS FTP listings that include external links.
Fixed "450 Transfer aborted. Link to file server lost" error when uploading to ProFTPD hosts.
Fixed SFTP connections failing depending on the key exchange algorithms enabled on the server.
Fixed read timeout when doing Active mode FTP transfers from vsFTPD servers.
macOS: Fixed read timeout when doing Active mode FTP transfers from ProFTPD servers.
Fixed "TLS session of data connection not resumed" errors when using TLS 1.3 to connect to FileZilla Server and other FTP servers that rely on GnuTLS.

Misc

Fixed truncated text in Japanese version.
macOS: Fixed "Browse Using Profiles" dialog local file system treeview flickering between incorrect file type icons.

WebDAV

Windows: Fixed WebDAV connections using NTLM authentication (e.g., SharePoint).

Crashes

macOS: Fixed crashes in "Browse Using Profiles" dialog.
macOS: Fixed crash when drawing a combobox.

4.4.0.25886 - August 13, 2021

Notable Changes

Added support for TLS 1.3.
Various enhancements for SFTP support.
Updated Dropbox profiles to use new short-lived access tokens.
Linux/macOS: Fixed corruption of characters outside the Unicode basic multilingual plane (e.g., emoji).
Various fixes and enhancements.

Cloud Services

Added support for TLS 1.3.
Updated Dropbox profiles to use new short-lived access tokens.
Linux: Fixed support for automatically trusting TLS certificates signed by a trusted certificate authority.

File Views

Linux: Added support for https:// URLs.
Linux: Fixed corruption of characters outside the Unicode basic multilingual plane (e.g., emoji). Displaying emoji is not supported yet, so they will show as <?> U+FFFD REPLACEMENT CHARACTER, but will remain the original characters when saving/editing.
macOS: Fixed support for characters outside the Unicode basic multilingual plane (e.g., emoji).
macOS: Fixed "Find..." autocomplete incorrectly changing capitalization when the search string matches an MRU string.

Folder Compare

Windows: Fixed using large buffers when loading remote network drives.
macOS: Fixed "Copy to Side" command not appearing on the toolbar or in menus if configured to do so.

FTP

Added support for Ed25519 SSH keys.
Added support for OpenSSH's newer private key format.
Added support for hmac-sha2-256-etm@openssh.com SSH HMAC algorithm.
Added support for TLS 1.3 for FTPS connections.
Fixed dropped SFTP connections when uploading files to CrushFTP.
Fixed truncated files when uploading to a Windows 10 OpenSSH server.
Fixed truncated files when downloading from an HP/Tandem NonStop SFTP server.
Adjusted SSH key exchange algorithms to be more conservative.

Installer

Linux: Updated .deb/.rpm packages to use https for remote repositories.

Misc

Linux: Check for Updates now uses HTTPS connections.
Linux: Fixed file sizes showing as <?> on locales that use non-ASCII characters (e.g., No-break space).
macOS: Fixed failure to launch a file comparison if an external process attempted it while BC was shutting down.
macOS: Fixed various issues with Finder extension.
macOS: Fixed file view path edits showing the old path when loading a new file.
macOS: Fixed file save dialog growing too wide and not being resizable on macOS Big Sur and later.
macOS: Fixed ESC to close modal dialogs even if they don't have a 'Cancel' button.
Downloading updates through the Check for Updates dialog now uses HTTPS connections.

Picture Compare

macOS: Fixed "Browse Using File System" showing all file types as unselectable.

Text Merge

macOS: Fixed "Align With" behavior.

Crashes

Fixed intermittent crash on shutdown.

4.3.7.25118 - October 2, 2020

Changes

macOS: Fixed slow scrolling on macOS 11 Big Sur.
macOS: Fixed regressions in 4.3.6 that caused blurry text on retina displays and slow scrolling performance in macOS 10.15 and earlier.
macOS: Fixed svn profile support on macOS 11 Big Sur.

4.3.6.25063 - September 10, 2020

Changes

macOS: Fixed graphical issues when running on macOS 11 Big Sur.
macOS: Fixed buttons & checkboxes incorrectly using small control sizes/fonts.
Changed "OS X" to "macOS" in the About dialog.

4.3.5.24893 - July 13, 2020

Notable Changes

Linux: Fixed file manager integration with various desktop environments.
macOS: Improved stability.
Windows: Disabled "Check for Updates" functionality on Windows XP, 2003, and Vista because they don't support HTTPS over TLS 1.2.

Cloud Services

Fixed OneDrive authentication to allow using accounts other than the one tied to the local Windows user account or system web browser's currently logged in Microsoft/Live.com account.

Command Line

Linux: Fixed file manager integration with various desktop environments:
- Thunar 1.8 (GTK3)
- XUbuntu (XFCE) thunarx-2 and thunarx-3
- Nautilus on Wayland
- Mint and Ubuntu using MATE desktop (Caja)
- Debian 10 Gnome

Folder Compare

Windows: Fixed reparse points being incorrectly treated as symlinks after file operations or refreshes.
Windows: Fixed resource leak when refreshing encounters an exclusively locked file.
macOS: Fixed "Folder Not Found" dialog not clicking "Reload" button when pressing [Enter].
Fixed "Ignored" showing as checked when nothing is selected.

FTP

Fixed parsing Comau C5G FTP listings.

Installer

Linux: Fixed apt-key warning when installing/upgrading .deb package.

Misc

Windows: Disabled "Check for Updates" functionality on Windows XP, 2003, and Vista because they don't support HTTPS over TLS 1.2.
Windows: Fixed digital signatures on pdftotext(64).exe.
macOS: Fixed some toolbars/menu items incorrectly disabling when clicking on a toolbar button.
macOS: Fixed Export Settings "Save As" dialog not including a .bcpkg extension.
Fixed enabling "Factory Defaults" button in File Formats dialog and Home view.

Options

Windows: Fixed 64-bit shell extension not updating the registry correctly when toggled in the Options dialog.

Text Compare

Fixed alignment weights for orphan lines.
macOS: Fixed thumbnail not redrawing correctly when reloading a comparison.

Crashes

Fixed crash when saving after editing session defaults on Home view.
Linux: Fixed intermittent crash in Folder Compare > Actions > Synchronize.
macOS: Fixed Home view crash after deleting a session.
macOS: Fixed Picture Compare crash when comparing JPEG files.
macOS: Fixed instability when launching a comparison from the command line.
macOS: General stability fixes.

4.3.4.24657 - February 28, 2020

Command Line

Linux: Fixed support for command line arguments and file names containing special characters.
macOS: Fixed bcomp never exiting if Beyond Compare is closed due to a crash or "Force Quit" command.
macOS: Fixed bcomp incorrectly returning 0 after canceling a merge.

File Formats

Windows: Updated pdftotext to v4.02.

Folder Compare

Fixed Touch dialog incorrectly resetting selection side when toggling "Including folder contents" checkbox.
Windows: Fixed using "Browse Using Profile" to select a folder inside a zip.
macOS: Fixed poor date/time editor behavior when modifying newer/older filters.

FTP

Fixed SFTP uploads to OpenSSH for Windows failing after 100KB.

Misc

Windows: "Check for Updates" now uses HTTPS connections.
Windows: Fixed using middle mouse click to scroll in views.
Windows: Fixed support for paths that explicitly include the Windows \?\ long filename prefix.
macOS: Fixed clicking on a window incorrectly bringing all application windows to the front.
macOS: Fixed various issues with path edit autocompletion.
macOS: Fixed closing maximized window on secondary monitor reopening on primary monitor.
macOS: Fixed default keyboard focus when dialogs are first shown.
macOS: Fixed poor behavior when dragging to rearrange view tabs or moving buttons on Home view.
macOS: Fixed dragging to rearrange items in list views.
macOS: Fixed File Formats dialog drawing checkboxes incorrectly after moving file format in list.

Picture Compare

macOS: Fixed details crosshatching for partially transparent pixels.

Reports

Updated <DOCTYPE> and <BR> tags in HTML reports.

Text Compare

macOS: Fixed loading http:// URLs in Text Compare.
macOS: Fixed text drawing over gutter when "Right side gutter for left editor" is enabled.
macOS: Fixed hex details not allowing scrolling to end of long lines.

Crashes

macOS: Fixed crash when modifying sessions on Home view.
macOS: Fixed crash when using error logging with multiple processes.

4.3.3.24545 - December 2, 2019

Folder Compare

macOS: Fixed Edit menu not showing Undo/Redo/Cut/Copy/Paste when in a modal dialog launched while the comparison treeview has focus.

Misc

Linux: Fixed using system-provided Qt4 library.

Options

macOS: Fixed labels getting progressively darker when opening/closing a combobox popup.
macOS: Fixed font size and weight for view tabs, toolbar buttons, and various other controls.

Settings

macOS/Linux: Fixed corruption warning when updating to Beyond Compare 4.3.

Table Compare

macOS: Fixed clicking "Mark" buttons in "Visible Columns" dialog.

Crashes

macOS: Fixed crash when moving a window between screens with different bit depths.

4.3.2.24472 - November 1, 2019

Folder Compare

Windows: Fixed loading comparisons of various types of NTFS reparse points, including local OneDrive folders.
Linux: Fixed hang when starting a file copy with "Confirm file copy" disabled.
macOS: Fixed "Comparison Results" dialog double clicking to launch a file compare on macOS 10.15 Catalina.

Misc

Linux: Fixed included Qt4 library not following system font and color settings.
Linux: System-provided Qt4 library will now be used instead of the included one if it's installed.

Crashes

macOS: Fixed crash when a shared sessions file is configured but doesn't exist.
macOS: Fixed crash in Folder Compare "Sync Preview" and various other dialogs on macOS 10.11-10.13.
macOS: Fixed crash when dragging windows between monitors or onto an iPad being used through Sidecar.

4.3.1.24438 - October 24, 2019

Notable Changes

Linux: Fixed compatibility with Linux distributions that no longer provide Qt4.
macOS: Improved stability and various other fixes.

File Formats

macOS: Fixed Conversion dropdown including its content multiple times.

File Views

macOS: Fixed horizontal scrolling behavior to follow "Natural Scrolling".
macOS: Fixed line height when using certain fonts.

Folder Compare

macOS: Fixed incorrect comparison results after file conversion errors.
macOS: Fixed selecting preset filters in the Name Filter combobox on the toolbar.

Home View

macOS: Fixed default keyboard focus for comparisons launched from the Home view.

Installer

Linux: 64-bit installer packages now include a private copy of Qt4.
macOS: Fixed Check for Updates new version install failing until a manual update and system restart.

Misc

macOS: Fixed treeviews not drawing correctly (Folder Compare Sync Preview, Folder Compare operation "Hidden Items" dialog, etc).
macOS: Fixed Comparison Info dialog drawing treeview over the top of the close button.
macOS: Fixed closing a view to activate the second most recently active one rather than the most recently created one.
macOS: Fixed dragging a file from Finder onto a path edit inserting just the filename under macOS 10.15 Catalina.

Table Compare

macOS: Improved compatibility and stability when comparing Excel .xls and .xlsx files.
macOS: Fixed Excel conversion failures being silently ignored.
macOS: Fixed height of inline edit in line details.
macOS: Fixed incorrect character coloring for lines with extended (non-ASCII) characters on them.

Crashes

macOS: Fixed crash when opening files with paths containing CJK characters.
macOS: Fixed crash when editing archive associations in Preferences.

4.3.0.24364 - October 9, 2019

Notable Changes

macOS: Upgraded to 64-bit and re-implemented interface in Cocoa. Supported versions are now macOS 10.11 through 10.15.
macOS: Added support for Microsoft OneDrive.
macOS: Text editor enhanced with macOS-specific behavior and improved performance.
macOS: Added support for Full Screen mode.
Fixed Patience Diff alignment never completing if the last line of the comparison is an orphan.

Cloud Services

macOS: Added support for Microsoft OneDrive.

File Formats

Fixed "Description" field for new file formats including text from most recently used file format.

Misc

macOS: Added support for autocompletion in path edits.
macOS: "Check for Updates" now uses HTTPS connections.
macOS: Fixed 'Reveal in Finder' so it doesn't ask the user for permission to automate Finder before it works.
macOS: Added support for per-monitor high-DPI images.
macOS: App bundle is now notarized by Apple.

Registry Compare

Windows: Fixed undo/redo handling of swapped sides.

Text Views

macOS: Added support for custom keybindings in ~/Library/Keybindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict.
macOS: Added support for long-pressing a letter to select an accented variant.
macOS: Added support for system pop-up dictionary (Ctrl+Cmd+D).
macOS: Added support for deleting accents on characters and segments in multi-segment glyphs (Ctrl+BkSp).
macOS: Added support for Killing (Ctrl+K) and Yanking (Ctrl+Y)
macOS: Added support for setMark:, selectToMark:, deleteToMark:, swapWithMark: keybinding commands.
macOS: Improved editing performance.

Text Compare

Fixed Patience Diff alignment never completing if the last line of the comparison is an orphan.

Crashes

Fixed crash when sorting Folder Compare/Sync by CRC.
Windows: Fixed crash on exit when overriding the locale in the registry.
Linux/macOS: Fixed crash when moving symbolic links across filesystems.

4.2.10.23938 - May 28, 2019

Notable Changes

Windows: Added support for Windows 10 case sensitive folders.
Windows: Fixed various issues with OneDrive profiles.

Cloud Services

Windows: Fixed OneDrive support for deleting folders.
Windows: OneDrive authentication now uses the default system web browser instead of an embedded one.
Windows: Fixed hang/crash if the OneDrive authentication dialog was shown twice within a single running instance of BC.

File Views

Unix: Fixed detecting character encoding errors when comparing files.

Folder Compare

Windows: Added support for Windows 10 case sensitive folders.

Misc

Windows: Embedded web browser used for "View as Webpage" and "Check for Updates" will now use newer Internet Explorer engines, up to IE11, if they're available.
Added Beyond Compare's CPU architecture to Check for Updates query.

Picture Compare

"Auto Scale", "Blend Toggle", and "Difference Offset" are no longer stored with session defaults.

Text Merge

Fixed position of "File Info" panel.

4.2.9.23626 - January 15, 2019

Changes

Windows: Upgraded OneDrive support to use the Microsoft Graph API.
- Fixed support for OneDrive, which was using a discontinued service.
- Added support for institutional ("Work or school") accounts.
- Fixed setting last modified times for folders.
- KNOWN ISSUE: Creating or re-authenticating 2 OneDrive profiles within a single instance of Beyond Compare will kill Beyond Compare without warning. Restart BC after authenticating the profile to avoid the issue.

4.2.8.23479 - October 29, 2018

Changes

Windows: Fixed 32-bit install including 64-bit PdfToText.exe.
Windows: Added support for standalone .svg files in Text Compare's "Webpages" view.
Added confirmation before canceling file operations when using Folder Compare's "Align" command with two files/folders selected.

4.2.7.23425 - October 25, 2018

Notable Changes

Windows/macOS: Improved PDF to text extraction and layout.
Linux: Added KDE5 Dolphin integration and fixed support for Ubuntu 18.04 Nautilus integration.
Bug fixes.

File Formats

Windows/macOS: Upgraded PdfToText to 4.00.01, switched to 64-bit builds where appropriate, and changed the output to use the new -simple layout option.
Added "*.dsql" to "SQL" file format.

Misc

Linux: Added KDE5 Dolphin integration. Thank you Benjamin Robin (benjarobin) for the new version!
Linux: Fixed installer for Nautilus integration in Ubuntu 18.04.
Windows: Fixed Japanese and Simplified Chinese installers including French CHM file.

Picture Compare

Improved error handling for malformed PPM images and added support for reading 16-bit per channel ASCII PPM files and scaling them down to 8 bits per channel.

Reports

Fixed "Too many open files" errors when generating file comparison reports of many files.

Crashes

macOS: Fixed startup crash on macOS Mojave 10.14 beta 4 (build 18A336e).
Windows: Fixed crash when trying to close a tab from the taskbar preview while the form has a modal dialog open.

4.2.6.23150 - July 13, 2018

Cloud Services

Added support for Amazon S3 time limited credentials requiring a security token.
Added support for loading Amazon S3 credentials from 'credentials'/'config' files or environment variables.

FTP

Fixed support for comparing files on FTP sites that have extensions containing characters that aren't valid on the local system.
Fixed using SFTP to connect to WPEngine and other ProFTPD SFTP servers that require new encryption algorithms.

Crashes

macOS: Fixed crash on macOS 10.14 Mojave beta 3.

4.2.5.23088 - June 15, 2018

Cloud Services

Fixed uploads to Dropbox failing silently for files larger than 150 MB.

Command Line

Linux: Fixed timing issue that could hang the launcher script.
Linux: Fixed exit code 100 when multiple users launch BC with the same temp folder.

File Formats

Improved "XML Tidy" handling of user defined entities.
Fixed "XML Sort" and "XML Tidy" to preserve original character encoding.

Folder Compare

Linux: Fixed support for 'Align filenames with different Unicode normalization forms'.
Version information is now shown for any file types associated with the Version Compare.
Fixed file operation "Pause/Resume" button's hint when paused.
Unix: Fixed file timestamps being off by up to 2 seconds due to a lossy UTC <-> local conversion.

FTP

Fixed SFTP/SCP connections not closing after an error (e.g., user cancel on "Unrecognized SSH host key" dialog).

Misc

Added Simplified Chinese as an official language for Windows and macOS.
Linux: Added context menus for KDE5.
Windows: Fixed BcClipboard incompatibility with MS Excel, PowerShell ISE, and Visual Studio.
Updated copyright date to 2018.
macOS: Fixed displaying version and copyright info in Finder's "Get Info" dialog.

Reports

Generated reports are now encoded with ANSI if both input files are ANSI on Windows, and UTF-8 for all other cases. The UTF-8 byte order mark is only written on Windows.
Folder Compare Reports using "Include links to file reports" now uses child session settings.

Text Edit

Find & Replace "Replace with" can now use \n and \r to add line breaks when using regular expressions.

Text Views

Fixed copying forcibly wrapped lines.

Crashes

Fixed Picture Compare "Summary" report crash.

4.2.4.22795 - January 30, 2018

Notable Changes

Fixed Folder Compare not including all selected items in file operations (primarily affects 64-bit Linux).
macOS: Fixed error messages when launching from the command line on macOS 10.13 High Sierra.
Various other fixes and enhancements.

Command Line

macOS: Fixed error messages when launching from the command line on macOS 10.13 High Sierra.

File Formats

Fixed RTF character encoding detection and added support for Unicode characters.
Fixed RTF table extraction to include tabs between cells and line endings between rows.

File Views

Fixed high DPI displays not showing the "Keep file read-only" checkbox when confirming overwriting a read-only file.
Fixed high DPI displays not showing the "Don't show again" checkbox when confirming "Copy File to Left/Right and Open Next Difference".

Folder Compare

Fixed Folder Compare not including all selected items in file operations (primarily affects 64-bit Linux).
Unix: Fixed error when trying to copy the same file to two destinations.
macOS: Fixed support for file names longer than 256 UTF-8 bytes.

Misc

Windows: Fixed mouse wheel scrolling a screen at a time.
Windows: Fixed entering registration keys copied from PDF files.
Linux: Fixed hang or slow exit on systems with a large number of networked printers.
Fixed translation support in clipboard manager.

Portable Devices (MTP)

Windows: Fixed resource leak when copying data from portable media devices.

Registry Compare

Fixed high DPI displays not showing the "Don't show again" checkbox when confirming the first edit in a session.

Subversion

Windows: Fixed hang when trying to connect to an SVN profile without any saved credentials.
Windows: Added support for canceling SVN connections that are slow/hung.
Fixed svn+file:// profiles incorrectly prompting for a username/password.

Table Compare

Fixed "Extract Microsoft Excel table" and "Extract HTML table(s)" incorrectly handling files containing a lot of Asian characters.

Text Views

Using "Copy Line(s) to Left/Right" gutter buttons clears the selection again (broken in v4.0).
Fixed filtered line counts to use the gutter font.

Text Merge

Fixed "Clear Conflict Section, Next" shortcut not working on detached merge pane.

Crashes

macOS: Fixed crash on close when using the Chinese translated version.
Fixed External Format quick compare crash.

4.2.3.22587 - August 30, 2017

Cloud Services

Fixed WebDAV showing invalid subfolders with the same name as the parent folder.

Command Line

Linux: Fixed excessive CPU usage when launching a second comparison from the command line.

FTP

Unix: Fixed crash when loading an FTP profile with the time zone set to Rome.

Misc

View tab bar no longer shows "Select Tab" and "Close Other Tabs" commands if there is only one tab.
Updated various icons.

MP3 Compare

Improved handling of AENC, GEOB, and APIC tags.

Options

Added "Minimum clip length" to clipboard manager to avoid saving passwords or other short text (defaults to 32).

Reports

Fixed display of custom display filter names (e.g., "[Differences]" instead of "Differences" when orphans not included).
Fixed UTF-8 reports not including a byte order mark, causing problems when importing them into Excel or viewing them in some web browsers.

Sessions

Session Settings dialog's "Swap sides" button now also affects "Disable editing" checkboxes.

Text Views

Unix: Fixed accented characters being entered as '?' when typed.

Crashes

macOS: Fixed startup crash on macOS 10.13 High Sierra beta.
Unix: Fixed Folder Compare crash when opening Options dialog from the Log panel.

4.2.2.22384 - May 19, 2017

Changes

macOS/Linux: Fixed ESC key not closing the Folder Compare "Compare Contents" dialog. (Broken in 4.2.0)
Windows: Installer now registers BCompare.exe in the App Paths registry key so it can be used from the Windows Run dialog or ShellExecute without a path.
Windows: Added SHA-256 code signatures to pdftotext.exe and patch.exe.
macOS: Fixed crash at launch when Beyond Compare.app is on a case sensitive file system and has been upgraded from a previous release. (Broken in 4.2.0)
macOS: Fixed crash when dragging & dropping an alias onto Beyond Compare.

4.2.1.22354 - May 10, 2017

Changes

macOS/Linux: Fixed "Too many open files" error when using an FTP site with unencrypted data channels (either FTP or FTPS with PROT C), broken in 4.2.0.
macOS: Fixed crash on startup when Beyond Compare.app is stored on a case sensitive file system, broken in 4.2.0.
Fixed Table Compare relative numeric tolerance difference session setting, broken in 4.2.0.
Windows: Fixed "Run Clipboard Compare on Windows startup" option.
Windows: Clipboard Compare now respects the "Clipboard Viewer Ignore" flag if it has been set by password managers like KeyPass.
macOS: Changed "Explorer Integration" labels in Options dialog to be "Finder Integration" instead.
Windows: Updated 7z.dll to v16.04.

4.2.0.22302 - April 28, 2017

Notable Changes

Windows: Added clipboard monitoring app to more easily launch comparisons from text editors. Must be enabled manually in Options dialog if upgrading from 4.1 or earlier. Requires Windows Vista or later.
macOS: Added full Finder context menu extension on macOS 10.10 and above. Must be enabled manually from the Beyond Compare "Preferences" dialog or macOS System Preferences. May require a reboot.
Added support for comparing JPEG/TIFF EXIF and IPTC metadata.
Removed "Bypass disk cache during binary comparisons" option. Due to changes in hardware, operating systems, and drivers, it no longer works as originally intended.
Upgraded Dropbox support to use v2 API. Dropbox support in v4.1.9 and earlier will stop working in June 2017.
Added support for .lzma and .tar.lzma/.tlz archives and improved RAR support.
macOS: Fixed scrolling behavior on macOS 10.12 Sierra and fixed Cmd+W/Esc inserting characters in a text editor rather than closing the view.
Improved various graphics on high DPI displays and updated many icons.

Cloud Services

Upgraded Dropbox support to use v2 API.
- File last modified times can now be set.
- Folder last modified times are no longer reported.
- Folder listings with more than 2,000 items are now supported.
Fixed support for Amazon S3 buckets in the us-east-2 (US East Ohio), ca-central-1 (Canada Central), eu-west-2 (EU London), and ap-south-1 (Asia Pacific Mumbai) regions and removed need to explicitly support new ones.
Improved OneDrive authorization and error handling.
Deleting folders on OneDrive now deletes everything in one call instead of removing everything recursively.
Added support for connecting to Amazon S3 buckets when the requesting user doesn't have the "s3:GetBucketLocation" permission.
Added optional "Bucket" to Amazon S3 profiles to limit the profile to that bucket and to make it more obvious how to connect when the user doesn't have the ListAllBuckets permission.
Windows: Added support connecting to Amazon S3 over IPv6.

Command Line

macOS: Fixed failure to load new comparisons from the command line after opening many previously without closing Beyond Compare.
Linux: Fixed minimized window not restoring when launching a new comparison.
Linux: Fixed main menu corruption when loading a second tab from the command line.

File Formats

Added "JavaScript Source" text format.
Updated "Python Scripts" text format keywords.
Fixed "COBOL Source" text format's line number matching.
Windows: Fixed MS Word extraction when running on a system with the Korean locale.
Improved "SQL" text format to detect identifiers that start with "#".

File Views

Added font resizing via Ctrl+Shift+MouseWheel and added "Increase Display Font Size", "Decrease Display Font Size", and "Reset Display Font Size" commands.
Added support for adding/removing Unicode byte-order marks in the "Save As" dialog.
macOS: Fixed newly opened views inserting characters when using keyboard shortcuts (Esc, Cmd+W, etc).
Fixed performance issue when the merge output file is on a slow network drive.
"Save As" now has a default filename when saving the initially empty side of an orphan comparison launched from a folder comparison if the parent folder exists.
Fixed file open permissions to prevent unexpected behavior when files are open for writing by other applications.
Fixed editors not repainting during slow saves after switching tabs.
Fixed dimmed painting of items during horizontal scrolls in MP3, Registry, and Version Compare sessions.

Folder Compare

Removed "Bypass disk cache during binary comparisons" option. Due to changes in hardware, operating systems, and drivers, it no longer works as originally intended.
Fixed canceling a rules-based or binary comparison of a large pair of files caching incorrect CRC values and causing subsequent CRC or rules-based comparisons to report immediately matching contents.
Fixed minimum column size to take margins into account.

Folder Merge

"Compare to Output" now preserves session settings (e.g., Name Filters).
"Merge/Sync Base Folders" now preserves more session settings.
Fixed "Ignored" action, when merging to a separate output folder, to not copy the center file to the output.

Folder Sync

Fixed toolbar appearing below the path edits.

FTP

Fixed "Hide VMS versions" support for SFTP profiles.
Fixed requesting CRC32 values over SFTP.
Fixed Profiles dialog not updating controls when switching between FTP and SFTP profiles.

Hex Compare

Added support for switching between the hex and ANSI parts of the editor using Tab and Shift+Tab.

Installer

Windows: Start Menu icon is now just a single "Beyond Compare 4" item rather than a folder with the app, help file, and uninstaller (new installs only).
Windows: Fixed automatic upgrades of a portable install writing values in the registry if there is also an existing "For All Users" install.
Windows: Removed UACLaunch.exe from Windows installer.

Misc

Windows: Added clipboard monitoring app to more easily launch comparisons from text editors.
macOS: Added full Finder context menu extension on macOS 10.10 and above.
"Duplicate Tab" now preserves clipboard contents, folder session parentage.
Improved various graphics on high DPI displays and updated many icons.
Fixed various high DPI issues and tweaked minimum constraints for various dialogs.
macOS: Fixed scrolling behavior on macOS 10.12 Sierra.
Fixed filename truncation when the whole filename doesn't fit the available space.
Toolbar gradients are no longer used under high contrast themes.
macOS/Linux: Fixed "Show Differences" popup button visibility and toolbar context menu checked states.
Upgraded third party libraries.

MP3 Compare

Improved handling for various ID3 tags.
Changed ID3v2 tag names to match their ID3v1 counterparts.
Disabled character-based differencing for numeric values.
Binary tags are now shown as hex digits.
"Copy" puts binary data on the clipboard if only one item is selected and it is binary.
Added separator lines below each row of the treeview.

Options

Improved typing into "Extra line spacing" edit on "Tweaks" page.

Picture Compare

Added support for comparing JPEG/TIFF EXIF and IPTC metadata.
"Fit to Window" zooms to multiple of 100% for images smaller than 64x64.
Improved menus for going into and out of "Full Screen" mode.
Fixed NetPBM image handling of comments containing numbers.
Changed order of items in "Picture Compare Info" dialog.

Registry Compare

"Copy" puts text on the clipboard unless only one item is selected and it is binary.
Added separator lines below each row of the treeview.

Reports

File reports now include error messages.
macOS/Linux: Added mouse wheel handling to "Print Preview" dialog.
Picture Compare HTML reports now scale down large images to fit the window.

Table Compare

Improved number handling accuracy by storing data as binary-coded decimals instead of floats.
Added "Alignment" session settings.
Improved typing scientific notation into "Numeric tolerance" edit.
Windows: Updated MS Excel support.
Fixed using regional number/date format settings, broken in 4.1.7.

Text Edit

Added folder path of open file to dropdown for "Find in Files" folder edit.

Text Views

macOS: Fixed Find with "Match Whole Word" always failing.

Text Compare

macOS/Linux: Fixed thumbnail showing 1 pixel high if two comparisons are launched quickly.
Linux: Removed non-functional "Webpages" command.

Text Merge

Changed order of items in "Text Merge Info" dialog.

Version Compare

Added support for comparing "Dynamic Base (ALSR)" and "NX compatible (DEP)" DLL characteristics.
Disabled character-based differencing for numeric values.
Binary tags are now shown as hex digits.
"Copy" puts binary data on the clipboard if only one item is selected and it is binary.
Added separator lines below each row of the treeview.

View Patch

Added check for external file changes.

Crashes

Fixed MP3, Registry, Version Compare crash if Ctrl+A is pressed when line details have focus and Ctrl+A isn't used as a shortcut for a menu action.
Windows: Fixed BCompareLite crash when opening/closing Options dialog.
macOS: Fixed crash on startup with invalid network printer.
macOS: Fixed hang when opening a zip file containing filenames with invalid UTF-8 sequences.
Linux: Fixed crashes or hangs when launching multiple comparisons from the command line.
macOS/Linux: Fixed crash when switching between Text Compare sessions in the Home view when the session overrides the default file format.
Fixed crashes on shutdown.

4.1.9.21719 - September 30, 2016

Changes

macOS: Fixed SSL/TLS-based profiles (FTPS, WebDAV, Dropbox, Amazon S3) crashes on macOS Sierra.
macOS/Linux: Fixed Hex Compare Find never completing.

4.1.8.21575 - August 25, 2016

Changes

Windows: Fixed scripting error when creating a new OneDrive profile.
Windows: Fixed Explorer right-click menu translations of "Compare Using" submenu.
Fixed displaying custom messages on Home view.

4.1.7.21529 - August 19, 2016

Notable Changes

Text Merge output files will now be written using file format external conversion settings.
Various fixes and improvements.

Cloud Services

Fixed support for Unicode paths and filenames on SharePoint WebDAV servers.
Fixed support for connecting to Amazon S3 buckets in the eu-west-1 region that were created in 2013 and earlier.
Fixed resource leak when uploading/downloading from Microsoft OneDrive.
Windows: "Open With" for WebDAV profiles now passes http:// URLs to the requested application instead of BC-specific profile: ones.
Improved error message if an S3 bucket is stored in an unrecognized AWS region.
Fixed loading WebDAV folder listings that include empty getcontentlength entries.

Command Line

Fixed /fileviewer= switch to use fixed English phrases instead of translated strings.

File Formats

macOS/Linux: Fixed importing file formats with external helper executables.
Fixed loading .docx files that have been modified using MiniZip.

File Views

"Save File Using Profile" now handles "Editing disabled" just like "Save File on File System As" does.
Changed button caption in "Save Changes?" confirmation dialog from "Save None" to "Discard All".

Installer

.msi packages now use SHA-256 code signing signatures instead of SHA-1 ones.

Misc

Fixed support for scrolling using laptops/tablets with precision touchpads (e.g., Surface Pro).
macOS: Fixed support for Beyond Compare "Services" menu extensions in apps other than Finder.
Added Japanese as an official language.
Time limited license keys now show a warning on the Home view when close to the expiration, and show the expiration date in the About dialog.

Options

Improved appearance of Options dialog and Home view for themes with dark backgrounds.

Reports

Fixed Picture Compare Report to use printer DPI instead of screen DPI.
Fixed Picture Compare Report handling of empty comparison.
Fixed plain text output of right justified text.
Fixed plain text output handling of gap lines.
Fixed Table Compare plain text output of interleaved headers.

Table Compare

Fixed performance regression introduced in 4.1.4.

Text Views

Windows: Fixed displaying emoji characters when "Enable font linking in editors" is enabled.
Linux: Fixed slow performance when long lines are visible.

Text Merge

Output files will now be written using file format external conversion settings.

Crashes

Windows: Fixed crash when opening a file on 64-bit Windows.
Windows: Fixed crash when opening Options dialog to Tweaks panel while DisableCheckForUpdates registry tweak is active.

4.1.6.21095 - May 13, 2016

File Views

Fixed current side indication when switching from path edits to other controls (e.g., "Find what" edit).

Folder Compare

macOS: Fixed "Touch" dialog modifying dates off by an hour depending on if daylight saving time is in effect.
Fixed "Open With" to use URL paths instead of profile: based ones when 1 or more than 2 items are selected.

FTP

Fixed excess memory usage when loading FTP/SFTP folder listings.

Hex Compare

Removed "Floating Extended" from "Little Endian Values" and "Big Endian Values" submenus.

Installer

macOS: Fixed downloading and installing updates failing with a "File missing" error. (Broken in 4.1.4).

Misc

Linux: Fixed support for -title1 and related switches.

Reports

Fixed resource leak when generating Folder Compare reports.

Source Control

Fixed exit codes returned when using ClearCase's -status_only switch.

Table Compare

Fixed orphan columns to not be excluded from the comparison.
Fixed Session Settings dialog's handling of last column.
Fixed detection of cell type error.

Crashes

Fixed Table Compare crash when regional settings are Dutch but file and format overrides are English.

4.1.5.21031 - March 18, 2016

Notable Changes

Fixed copying/moving files between disks/partitions/servers not working or not preserving DOS 8.3 names, NTFS ACLs, creation dates, or Unix xattrs. (Broken in 4.1.4)
Windows: Fixed support for adding files with non-ASCII filenames to zip archives.
Added INCLUDE-EMPTY option to scripting SNAPSHOT command.
macOS/Linux: Added/fixed support for Unix mode within zip archives.

Cloud Services

Fixed support for Amazon S3 buckets in Frankfurt and Seoul regions.

Folder Compare

Fixed copying/moving files between disks/partitions/servers not working or not preserving DOS 8.3 names, NTFS ACLs, creation dates, or Unix xattrs. (Broken in 4.1.4)
Fixed folders being incorrectly treated as successfully loaded if enumerating their contents failed part way through.
Fixed error handling during folder loads so transient network errors no longer treat the folder as deleted.

FTP

Fixed support for connection to SSH servers that have disabled diffie-hellman-*-sha1 key exchange algorithms.

Home View

Fixed painting bug when pinning or unpinning session management on Home view.

Installer

Linux: Fixed "Check for Updates" support on .deb based installs.
Linux: Fixed x86_64.tar.gz incorrectly installing to /usr/lib32 on CentOS 7.

Misc

macOS/Linux: Fixed button order and default buttons for various dialogs.
Linux: Fixed drag and drop of file with non-ASCII characters in their filenames.
Fixed high DPI support of various images.

Portable Devices (MTP)

Windows: Fixed intermittent folder load errors on a Philips GoGear MP3 player.
Windows: Fixed "Element not found" errors when deleting files on a Philips GoGear MP3 player.

Scripting

Added INCLUDE-EMPTY option to scripting SNAPSHOT command.

Crashes

Windows: Fixed crash when deleting using an external application to delete an unbuilt folder on an MTP device.
Windows: Fixed crash when renaming folders within archives.
Windows: Fixed crash when deleting a file on an MTP device while it's open in a file view.
Fixed Text Patch crash using "Cut" app command.
Fixed Hex Compare crash when typing in gap in the ANSI panel in overwrite mode.
macOS/Linux: Fixed crash when loading malformed Unicode data in the Text Compare/Table Compare.

4.1.4.20978 - March 3, 2016

Notable Changes

Windows: Added /32 switch to installer to force a 32-bit install on 64-bit Windows in order to work around MSSCCI source control providers that don't have 64-bit DLLs.
Windows: Fixed 64-bit build's support for Explorer submenu's Cut/Copy commands.
Re-added Table Compare support for overriding decimal and thousands separator characters.
Fixed crash when using cloud profiles (Amazon S3, Microsoft OneDrive, WebDAV) on February 29th.
Various fixes and enhancements.

Cloud Services

Fixed Amazon S3 support for listing more than 1000 folders within a single parent.
Fixed Amazon S3 support for uploading very large files.
Fixed support for uploading files larger than 100MB to Microsoft OneDrive.

Command Line

Fixed /fileviewer= support for "Folder Compare", "Folder Sync", and "Folder Merge" when passed with folder paths.
macOS: Fixed intermittent delay on startup when launching using command line tools.

File Formats

macOS/Linux: Fixed importing and exporting file formats with helper files.
macOS/Linux: Fixed support for renaming file formats using right click command and keyboard shortcut.
Fixed support for .docx files that have internal .xml files using single quotes instead of double quotes for attribute values.

File Views

Windows: Fixed "Find what" and "Replace with" edits automatically picking MRUs.
Improved line details drawing of multi-line content in MP3 Compare, Registry Compare, and Version Compare.

Folder Compare

macOS/Linux: Fixed support for moving files in subfolders between file system mount points.

Folder Merge

Added "Ignore Same Changes" filter.

Folder Sync

macOS: Fixed "Delete to recycle bin" option to refer to trash instead.

Hex Compare

Fixed "Find Previous" to not include beyond current byte.
macOS/Linux: Fixed slow performance when editing.

Home View

macOS: Fixed path edits not being refreshed when selecting a session in the treeview.

Installer

Windows: Added /32 switch to installer to force a 32-bit install on 64-bit Windows in order to work around MSSCCI source control providers that don't have 64-bit DLLs.

Misc

Windows: Fixed 64-bit build's support for Explorer submenu's Cut/Copy commands.
Opening multiple modal dialogs on a single form will now open them sequentially rather than all at once.
Windows: Fixed Windows 7+ jumplist including auto-saved sessions that can't be loaded.
Windows: Fixed icon scaling for simple message dialogs.
Linux: Fixed slow startup when there are lots of network printers available.
Linux/Gnome: Fixed default focus on "Save Changes?" and various other dialogs.
Fixed memory leaks.
Fixed clipped text in About dialog.

Picture Compare

Fixed "File Info" panel.

Reports

Fixed filename collisions when generating HTML folder reports with linked file reports.
Fixed plain text reports handling of multiline data.
Fixed Table Compare and Registry Compare support for strike-outs in reports.
Fixed HTML linked file reports to use the same style sheet, title, and wrap setting as the parent folder report.
Footer font, header font, HTML wrap style, and style sheet URL are now stored per report type instead of globally.

Source Control

Linux: Fixed support for diffs/merges launched from ClearCase.

Table Compare

Re-added support for overriding decimal and thousands separator characters.
Fixed data not to be treated as numeric if thousands separators are not in correct positions.

Text Views

"Next Difference" now scrolls line details so the difference is near the left side.
macOS/Linux: Fixed slow performance when editing.
macOS/Linux: Fixed support for saving files with Unicode characters outside the basic multilingual pane.
Windows: Fixed "Replace with" edit showing as selected when the panel is first shown.

Crashes

Fixed crash when using cloud profiles (Amazon S3, Microsoft OneDrive, WebDAV) on February 29th.
macOS/Linux: Fixed Folder Compare crash when attempting to collapse folders while loading with folders being automatically expanded.
Windows: Fixed crash when showing modal dialogs on 64-bit Windows installs.
macOS: Fixed startup crash on macOS 10.10.1.
Linux: Fixed report "Print Preview" crash

4.1.3.20814 - December 17, 2015

Notable Changes

Fixed Hex Compare truncated comparison results for large files with a difference at the very end.
Fixed support for creating multiple OneDrive profiles so it will prompt for login information every time.
macOS/Linux: Fixed support for FTP file transfers larger than 2GB.
Fixed "Unsupported cipher" error when opening an SFTP connection to mod_ftpd servers (e.g., wpengine.com).
macOS: Fixed support for using Asian input methods.
Stability improvements.

Cloud Services

Fixed support for creating multiple OneDrive profiles so it will prompt for login information every time.
Fixed displaying file sizes larger than 2GB on Amazon S3.
Fixed high-DPI scaling of OneDrive login tab.
Improved behavior when creating a OneDrive profile and canceling or encountering an error.

FTP

macOS/Linux: Fixed support for file transfers larger than 2GB.
macOS/Linux: Fixed SFTP "Auto" transfers to a Unix system incorrectly converting files to a Windows line ending.
Fixed IPv4 FTP connections using passive transfers with firewalls that watch for PASV but not EPSV.
Fixed FTP HOST command when using IPv6 addresses.
Fixed "Unsupported cipher" error when opening an SFTP connection to mod_ftpd servers (e.g., wpengine.com).

Hex Compare

Fixed truncated comparison results for large files with a difference at the very end.
Fixed "Find Next" when selection exists.

Home View

Fixed support for dropping multiple files/folders on a path edit.

Misc

macOS: High resolution icons are now used on retina displays.
Windows: Removed unnecessary "Browse File System" command.

MP3 Compare

Added support for duplicate tags of all kinds (e.g., PRIV, WOAR).
Improved handling of "unknown" tags (e.g., NCON, RGAD, TRDO).
Fixed handling of files that only contain tags.

Registry Compare

Fixed support for copying zero-length binary values.

Reports

Windows/Linux: Fixed HTML reports generated from computers with high DPI displays showing various images too large.

Text Views

macOS: Fixed support for using Asian input methods.

Crashes

Windows: Disabled Explorer context menu extensions that rely on the .NET runtime to prevent crashes due to incompatibilities.
macOS: Fixed startup failure on macOS 10.10.0 and 10.10.1.
macOS: Fixed crash when there are no windows open.
Fixed crash connecting to an SFTP server using an HTTP proxy.

4.1.2.20720 - November 9, 2015

Notable Changes

Improved performance and stability, especially under macOS.
Fixed connection issues introduced by IPv6 support.
Numerous bug fixes and tweaks.

File Formats

Removed no longer supported .dbf mask from built-in MS Excel file format.

File Views

Fixed "Keep file read-only" option when saving a file.

Folder Compare

Linux 32-bit: Fixed "Value too large for defined data type" error when interacting with files larger than 2GB.
"Align filenames with different extensions" no longer affects folders, except to align them with archives.
"Open With" and "Copy Filename" now use URL paths instead of profile: based ones.
Sort by extension is now case insensitive.
Added warning panel if "Suppress Filters" is used with "Ignore Folder Structure" when folder filters may be excluding files.
Fixed "Ignore Folder Structure" not applying name filters for folders added externally and detected as part of a fast refresh.
Fixed "Exclude protected operating system files" filter not being respected if "Ignore Folder Structure" is active.
macOS/Linux: Fixed "Hide Log" not being remembered.
macOS/Linux: Fixed "Attributes" dialog not showing the octal representation.
macOS/Linux: Improved rules-based comparison performance regression relative to v3.

FTP

Fixed issues with IPv6 support.
Fixed connecting to an FTP site using a URL that includes the password.
Fixed SFTP errors connecting to certain versions of OpenSSH with AES GCM enabled.

Home View

Windows: Fixed black fringes around various graphics at > 100% DPI scaling.

Installer

Linux: Fixed warning message when installing from RPM if symbolic link to libbz2.so.1.0 already exists.

Misc

macOS: "Browse File System", "Browse Using Profile", "Open File", and "Save File" dialogs now include hidden items based on Finder's "Show All Files" setting.
macOS: Hidden files/folders are now shown ghosted in "Browse Using Profile" dialog.
Windows: Fixed archive files not appearing in the "Browse Using Profile" dialog if Explorer's "Hide known file extensions" option is active.
macOS/Linux: Improved text comparison performance.
Fixed context sensitive help on tabbed dialogs.
Windows: Fixed size of menu checkmarks on high DPI displays.
Windows: Fixed taskbar jumplist subcategories on Windows 8+.

Options

macOS: Fixed broken font and color panels on macOS 10.11 El Capitan.

Picture Compare

Windows: Fixed loading .bmp files with extra padding after the file header.

Reports

macOS: Fixed Picture Compare Reports not showing correctly in Safari.

Scripting

Windows: Fixed garbage characters being logged for FTP URLs that include passwords.

Table Compare

Windows: Fixed loading .xlsx files in translated releases.
Windows: Fixed conversion error loading MS Excel .xlsx files that worked in 4.0.

Crashes

macOS: Fixed various crashes.
Fixed Folder Compare crash when the active "Align With" item is removed externally.
Fixed Folder Compare crash when changing folder filters while a flattened comparison is loading.
macOS: Fixed crash when "Home" button is hidden from the toolbar.
Windows: Fixed crash while saving HTML Picture Compare Report if bitmap does not have 32-bit color depth.
Fixed crash when loading workspace with undefined Z-orders.
Fixed crash on startup when loading workspaces before sessions.
Fixed crash when importing unsupported auto-saved sessions.
Linux: Fixed crash when closing the Refresh tip dialog.

4.1.1.20615 - September 25, 2015

Changes

Added "Use IPv6 when available" tweak.
Fixed crash when opening "File Formats" dialog from an empty MP3, Registry, or Version Compare session.
Fixed exporting file formats either exporting the wrong formats or crashing.

4.1.0.20575 - September 22, 2015

Notable Changes

Windows/Linux: Added 64-bit version that handles significantly larger comparisons.
Linux: Updated user interface to use Qt 4.8 instead of Qt 3.3.
Windows: Comparing Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (.xls, .xlsx) is now significantly faster and no longer requires Excel.
macOS/Linux: Added support for Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets (.doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx).
Windows: Added support for Microsoft OneDrive.
macOS/Linux: Added read/write support for 7-zip .7z archives and read-only support for many additional types (.iso, .rar, .dmg, etc).
Added support for .xz and .tar.xz archives.
macOS: Added MP3 Compare.
Added support for 3-way merges in the "External" format.
Added support for IPv6 to FTP and FTPS connections.
Windows: Added support for IPv6 to SFTP, WebDAV, and cloud services connections.
Windows: Added support for taskbar jump lists on Windows 7 and up.
macOS/Linux: Fixed SSL validation to not warn for certificates signed by trusted certificate authorities (affects FTPS, WebDAV, and cloud services).
Linux: "PDF Documents" file format is now included by default.
Windows: Improved appearance when using 125%, 150%, and 200% DPI scaling and high contrast themes.
Linux: Dialog button order on Gnome is now right-to-left instead of always following KDE conventions.
macOS: "Open With" now works with application bundles (.app).
Numerous bug fixes, performance enhancements, and other improvements.

Cloud Services

Windows: Added support for Microsoft OneDrive.
Windows: Added support for IPv6.
macOS/Linux: Fixed SSL validation to not warn for certificates signed by trusted certificate authorities.
Connection errors now include descriptive messages instead of numeric codes.
macOS/Linux: Fixed loading files/folders with extended characters in their names.
Improved default names for newly created Dropbox profiles.
Fixed memory leak when creating a new folder on Amazon S3.

Command Line

Windows: Fixed bcomp.com/bcomp.exe so it loads BC4 instead of trying to load BC3 if it's been copied to a different folder.
/fileviewer= can now accept "Folder Compare", "Folder Sync", and "Folder Merge" in addition to the file view types.

File Formats

Added support for 3-way merges in the "External" format.
Windows: Comparing Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (.xls, .xlsx) is now significantly faster and no longer requires Excel.
macOS/Linux: Added support for Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets (.doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx).
Linux: "PDF Documents" file format is now included by default.
Windows: Fixed various issues when loading Microsoft Word documents (.doc, .docx).
Fixed "Visual Basic Source" comment definition.
Removed "Microsoft Write" support.

File Views

Windows: Failing to save a file because it's locked against deletion will now try again using an alternate method.
macOS: Open/save dialogs now treat .app bundles as folders to allow selecting files within them.
Fixed editing files with file extension that match read-only archive types (e.g., .img).
Windows: Fixed access denied error when trying to overwrite a file with write permissions but not modify permissions.
Border of the viewport in the comparison thumbnail no longer covers differences.
macOS/Linux: Fixed load errors when trying to set sharing permissions when opening files.
Switched save icon color back to blue.

Folder Compare

Added icons to the file operation progress reporting panels indicating the file operation that's occurring.
"Browse Using Profile" dialog now shows more useful text in the browse treeview when a profile has been selected but not loaded.
Fixed using "Ignore Folder Structure" to not incorrectly include/exclude files in the root of the comparison that match folder name filters.
Windows: Fixed copied junctions/symlinks showing as folders until after a refresh.
Windows: Fixed issues overwriting an existing junction/symlink.
macOS/Linux: Fixed "Compare Contents" dialog not displaying the ?= icon.
macOS/Linux: Fixed using Esc to cancel an in-place file rename.
macOS: Improved speed of rules-based text comparisons.
Improved readability of selected "Align With" or "Compare To" item.
Fixed incremental search matching incorrect filenames.

Folder Merge

Added "Session > Folder Merge Info" command.
Changed mergeable toggle icon colors.
"Compare to Output" is now only shown if "Merge to" is "Other".
macOS: Fixed path edits displaying text incorrectly when unfocused.

FTP

Added support for IPv6 to FTP and FTPS connections.
Windows: Added support for IPv6 to SFTP connections.
Improved behavior when trying to load an ftp:// URL with an invalid or empty username.
Added TLS/SSL version fallback when connecting to servers that don't support more recent TLS versions.
Improved port allocation behavior when using limited ports for active (PORT) transfers.
macOS/Linux: Fixed timestamps with missing seconds incorrectly showing as hh:mm:01.
macOS/Linux: Fixed SSL validation to not warn for certificates signed by trusted certificate authorities.
Reconnecting to a server no longer uses the HOST command if the server rejected it previously.
Fixed Quick Connect password edit showing the password in plain text if the "Username" field was empty.
Fixed Quick Connect showing user@example.com in the password edit when loaded with an sftp:// URL that doesn't include a password.
Fixed collisions when saving a profile into a subfolder that already contains a profile with the same auto-generated name.
macOS: Fixed folder listings with invalid characters being treated as an empty.
Fixed parsing folder listings containing filenames with a 年 character in them.

Hex Compare

Fixed positioning after a Find fails when selection existed beforehand.
Fixed replacing "a" with "aa" in reverse direction.
Fixed Find to not skip first occurrence when positioned immediately before it.

Home View

macOS/Linux: Added support for multi-select in the session treeview.
Session management panel can now be maximized, hiding quick launch buttons.
Empty auto-saved sessions folders are now removed.

Installer

Linux: Added support for nemo and caja file managers, fixing support for context menus on Mint.
Windows: .msi installers now disable check for updates by default.
Windows: Fixed support for the /noicons switch.
Windows: Fixed installer so it writes ExePath/Version to both 32-bit and 64-bit areas of the registry.

Misc

Windows/Linux: Added 64-bit version that handles significantly larger comparisons.
Linux: Updated user interface to use Qt 4.8 instead of Qt 3.3.
Linux: Dialog button order on Gnome is now right-to-left instead of always following KDE conventions.
macOS: "Open With" now works with application bundles (.app).
Windows: Added support for taskbar jump lists on Windows 7 and up. Most frequently used workspaces, sessions, and session types are shown.
Windows: Improved appearance of icons on 125%, 150%, and 200% DPI scaling.
Windows: Improved appearance when using a high contrast theme.
Windows: Path edits now strip enclosing quotes from pasted strings.
Improved startup and comparison speed.
Linux: Find & Replace regular expression support is now based on PCRE.
Linux: Temp file handling now respects the $TMPDIR environment variable.
Fixed Profiles dialog's "Save As" command creating empty profiles instead of copying the selected profile's settings.
Fixed Profile dialog preventing multiple profiles from having the same name or having a name containing illegal characters.
Fixed deleting temp files after a crash to include files with extensions other than .tmp.
Reduced menu accelerator duplicates.
macOS: Fixed toolbar Sessions dropdown list sizing too large.
Linux: Suppressed hints/warnings written to stderr.
Improved behavior trying to register with a malformed key.
Windows: Fixed read-only temp files not being deleted.
Windows: .bcpkg files are no longer included in the Recent Documents list.
Windows: Updated application manifest to disable compatibility shims on Windows 8 and 8.1.
Windows: Fixed appearance of alpha-blended icons in the Explorer submenu.
Fixed truncated German translations.

MP3 Compare

macOS: Added MP3 Compare.
Added "Play" command to right click menu.

Options

macOS: Fixed changing size of text editor gutter text.
macOS: Fixed scrolling the Tweaks panel with the mouse wheel.
macOS: Fixed opening the "Log" preferences from the Folder Compare interface.
macOS/Linux: Fixed support for ~/log.txt style filenames when saving the log to a file automatically.

Picture Compare

Re-added option to change the background color behind transparent images.

Portable Devices (MTP)

Improved error message when a delete or intra-device copy or move fails.
Fixed reading files potentially including data past the end of the file.

Registry Compare

Fixed "Copy" and "Copy Key Name" commands to switch focus to the editor.
Fixed displaying "(zero-length binary value)".

Reports

Reports for edited files now use UTF-8 instead of ANSI.
Fixed "Action could not be completed" error when saving reports that contain characters that the output format can't encode.
MP3 and Version Compare reports now show comparison status in the center column when a node is collapsed.
Tweaked monochrome reports.

Scripting

Fixed REPORT commands so they log any errors that occur and fail the script.
Fixed using ~/log.txt style filenames when using the LOG command with the APPEND: option.
Fixed scripts failing to run if they used "smart" quotes rather than ASCII ones.
Script dialog now shows fatal errors on the "Errors" tab.

Subversion

Improved default names for newly created profiles.
Fixed support for http://, https://, and file:// URLs in folder browse's "Quick Connect".
Fixed "Up one level" for svn:// URLs.
Fixed folder browse dialog to show the folder structure up to the repository root when loading an svn:// URL.
Fixed support for loading svn:// URLs that refer to files when the parent folder hasn't been loaded.
Fixed loading file content from a Subversion server with an untrusted SSL certificate.

Text Views

macOS: Fixed intermittent issue with pasting from other applications.
macOS: Fixed load errors for files with certain character encodings.
Fixed cursor positioning on lines that contain multiple control characters.

Text Compare

Improved "Align With..." when aligning a selection of lines.
Windows: "Webpages" uses Internet Explorer again.
Windows: Fixed clicking on the gutter buttons while the message panel is visible.

Text Merge

Fixed incorrect output when using Patience Diff alignment.

Version Compare

Tweaked behavior when the StringFileInfo blocks don't match the VarFileInfo Translation block.

WebDAV

Windows: Added support for IPv6.
Improved default names for newly created profiles.
macOS/Linux: Fixed SSL validation to not warn for certificates signed by trusted certificate authorities.

Crashes

Fixed Folder Compare crash when using "Ignore Folder Structure" with a name filter that uses ... to match any number of subfolders.
Windows: Fixed crash when mousing over TortoiseHg menu items in the "Explorer" submenu.
macOS: Fixed crash when unable to find default printer.
macOS: Fixed crash using the titlebar's maximize button.
macOS/Linux: Fixed crash in Folder Compare "Touch" dialog.
Windows: Fixed Registry Compare crash saving export file containing zero-length binary value.
Fixed Table Compare crash when saving as part of a refresh.
Fixed crash when generating Folder Compare reports.
Linux: Fixed crash when detaching Text Merge output panel.
Linux: Fixed crash when passing a command line longer than 512 bytes.
Linux: Fixed crash when pasting into an empty text editor.
Windows: Fixed crash when using "Compare Versions" in a Folder Merge containing .exe files that have been added or deleted.
macOS: Fixed crash displaying Thai text.
macOS: Fixed ability to launch on systems that don't have libc++1.dylib (primarily 10.6 Snow Leopard).
Fixed Home view crash when a shared sessions folder is selected and the shared settings file is changed externally.
Fixed crash when closing the Profile Browse dialog while it's trying to expand a folder.
Fixed Hex Compare Next/Previous Difference crash when positioned beyond last byte.
Fixed Folder Compare crash when deleting/moving a file or folder.
Fixed Profile Browse dialog crash when trying to browse portable media devices.
Fixed crash if a MSSCCI provider returns an error code when opening or closing a connection or querying for capabilities.
Fixed crash when a portable media device was disconnected while it was in use.
Fixed crash when closing a window.
macOS: Fixed crash when using a non-Gregorian calendar crashes on start up.
Fixed Options dialog crash when loading commands.

4.0.7.19761 - March 4, 2015

Changes

Fixed trial mode issues on macOS 10.6.8.

4.0.6.19729 - February 27, 2015

Notable Changes

Added support for non-interactively importing .bcpkg files.
Fixed SSL/TLS connection issues.

Cloud Services

Changed secure connections to use TLS 1.0-1.2 rather than SSL3 and TLS 1.0.
Fixed Dropbox support for downloading files.
Fixed Dropbox support for uploading files larger than 150MB.

Command Line

A settings package file (.bcpkg) can now be imported non-interactively from the command line using bcompare <filename> /silent

Folder Compare

Fixed connecting to a UNC path without permission to access parent folders.
Failed/canceled copies will now delete partially transferred files if the target file was created during the copy.
Fixed high-DPI scaling of Browse dialog's "Quick Connect" panels.

Folder Sync

Fixed long translations of preset descriptions overwriting the summary label.

FTP

Private keys that don't have a corresponding .pub file will now prompt for a passphrase.
Profiles that have a private key and an invalid saved password will now log in correctly.

Misc

Fixed support for canceling update downloads.

Scripting

macOS/Linux: Fixed support for ~/log.txt style filenames in LOG command.

Text Merge

Fixed issues with lines that only exist in the ancestor file when that panel is hidden in the display.

WebDAV

Fixed problems connecting to older SSL servers.
Fixed folders showing within themselves.
Fixed support for filenames containing #.

Crashes

Fixed Hex Compare crash when resizing view.
Fixed MP3/Registry/Version Compare crash when using Find with no items visible.
Windows: Fixed crash when another application has the clipboard open.
Fixed crash when reading files with malformed UTF-8 sequences.
macOS: Fixed folder browse dialog crash when $HOME is set to a non-standard location.
Fixed crash when importing sessions

4.0.5.19480 - January 27, 2015

FTP

Fixed support for connecting through SSL using FTPS, WebDAV, and other connection methods after patches for Poodle exploit.
Fixed re-prompting for an SSH private key passphrase if the first one entered isn't correct.
Fixed loading the public key portion of a PuTTY .ppk file when the private key is encrypted.

4.0.4.19477 - January 16, 2015

Notable Changes

Re-added ability to disable grayscale coloring in Picture Compare "Tolerance" mode.
Fixed issues on macOS 10.6-10.8.
Improved importing settings from v3.

Folder Compare

Added current folder to dropdown for "Copy/Move to Folder" path edit.
Added "Merge Base Folders" command.
Added "Close Subfolders" command.
"Folder Not Available" dialog is now wider and resizable.

Installer

macOS: Update within BC hangs on 10.8 and older.

Misc

macOS: Fixed inability to launch on macOS 10.6 and 10.7.
Made various dialogs wider.

Picture Compare

Added "Ghost Mode" to switch between ghost and solid when in "Tolerance Mode".

Settings

Import now supports auto-saved sessions.
Fixed Import handling when picked xml filename does not match expected.
Fixed importing Folder Compare's "Toggles", "Up one level" and name filter edit visibility from v3.
Fixed importing BC3 settings when installing into a portable folder.

Crashes

Fixed crash when running a script and exiting when finished.

4.0.3.19420 - January 6, 2015

Notable Changes

macOS: Fixed code signature failure on macOS 10.9 and 10.10.
Bug fixes and polish.

File Views

macOS/Linux: Fixed editing files on SMB servers using the smb:// path syntax.
Added accelerators to popup menu commands.
Fixed "File Info" panel text clipping.

Folder Compare

Improved speed when opening Compare Contents results dialog.
Actions menu is no longer hidden while in "Align with..." mode.

Folder Sync

Fixed swapping overridden sync actions.

FTP

Fixed support for connecting to FTP servers that disconnect in response to a HOST command.

Hex Compare

Fixed "Go to next difference in files after copying to other side".

Home View

Added "Edit Defaults" button when the session editing panel is hidden and a new session type is selected in the treeview.
Improved visibility handling of the session edit panel.

HTTP

Fixed support for HTTP comparisons of SOAP services that don't accept HEAD requests.

Misc

macOS: Fixed code signature failure on macOS 10.9 and 10.10.
macOS: Fixed failure to write log file when set to continuously do so.
macOS: Fixed some files in the Beyond Compare.app bundle being stored as duplicates rather than symbolic links.
Improved position and sizing of floating in-line edits in Folder Compare and Table Compare.
Session Settings dialog's "Scope" combobox is now aligned vertically with the Ok/Cancel buttons.

Options

Fixed File Views Gutter Font swatch clipping.

Picture Compare

Increased max zoom to 2000%.
Tweaked drawing of selected pixel in the details grid.

Settings

Installing BC4 into a BC3 portable folder now moves BC3 settings into a subfolder and offers to import them.
Fixed importing settings from some older releases.

Subversion

Windows: SSL connections will now trust self-signed and expired certificates instead of being unable to connect.

Text Compare

Edit menu is no longer hidden while in "Align with..." mode.
Fixed Text Replacement handling of right-sided difference.

Crashes

Fixed crash when performing a Quick Compare with an External Format.
Fixed crash when using the FTP Quick Connect "Connect & Browse" button when the "Host" edit is empty.
Fixed Text Merge crash when changing "Merge to" changes detected file format.
macOS: Fixed crash when showing Hex Compare find panel.

4.0.2.19186 - November 14, 2014

macOS: Fixed crash when showing Find Text panel.

4.0.1.19165 - November 13, 2014

Notable Changes

Added MOVETO scripting command that accepts the same arguments as COPYTO.
HTTP proxy information is now read from the system and will prompt for a username/password if necessary.
Improved folder browse dialog's FTP "Quick Connect" handling of passwords.
macOS/Linux: UNIX extended attributes are now copied when creating new folders (e.g., macOS color labels).
Folder Compare now excludes uncompared file pairs when the display filters are set to only show orphans.
Various other fixes.

Cloud Services

HTTP proxy information is now read from the system and will prompt for a username/password if necessary.
SSL certificates now match hosts listed in the Certificate Subject Alt Name property in addition to the Common Name.
Improved granularity of progress reporting so it's better than every 4MB.
Fixed canceling transfers in the middle of a file.

File Formats

External conversions now support %o variable for original filename.
Windows: Fixed PDF and external conversions failing for filenames with certain international characters.

File Views

Fixed Find panel clipping the path edits.
Fixed Find panel updating of "Sides" when switching between "Show More" and "Show Less".
"Automatically reload unless changes will be discarded" tweak now affects saving a file that is compared to itself.

Folder Compare

macOS/Linux: UNIX extended attributes are now copied when creating new folders (e.g., macOS color labels).
Unknown files will now be filtered out if the display filters are set to only show orphans.
Fixed support for filename filters with path information (e.g., dir\*.txt) when "Ignore folder structure" is active.
Fixed support for using "Align filenames with different extensions" in combination with "Archive handling: As files always".
Windows: Increased threshold for unbuffered file copies from 128MB to 1GB to help with slowdowns.
Fixed file operation's unresponsive "Show Hidden Items" dialog.
Folder browse dialog path display now uses the same icons and formatting as the Home view rather than visibly using the profile: syntax.
"Copy/Move to Folder" now hides the "Folder Structure" options when they don't apply rather than just disabling them.
Fixed minimizing long filenames in "Confirm File Replace" dialog.
Toggling "Ignore Unimportant" will now hide files that were visible because they were opened in a file view.

Folder Sync

Added captions for various toolbar buttons.
Fixed handling of Summary text for auto-saved sessions.

FTP

Browse dialog's "Quick Connect" no longer includes passwords in the output path.
Fixed Browse dialog's Quick Connect "Save Password" checkbox so it creates a new profile or updates the existing one.
Browse dialog's Quick Connect "Password" edit will now fill in automatically if the username/host/port match a saved profile.
Fixed changing the FTP filename encoding to disable UTF-8 on servers that support it.
SSL certificates now match hosts listed in the Certificate Subject Alt Name property in addition to the Common Name.
Improved debug logging of SFTP directory listings.

Installer

Windows: Added Amazon S3 mime.types to .msi installers.
Windows: Installer now prevents installation on systems that don't meet the minimum system requirements (Windows 2000, Windows XP pre-Service Pack 3).

Misc

Windows: Closing top-level windows no longer brings background windows on top of other applications.
Windows: Added support for drag & drop from Explorer when the source location is on an FTP site or within a zip file.
Windows: Fixed drag & drop from applications that worked in v3 but not v4 (e.g., "FileLocator Pro" and "Code Co-op").
Windows: Fixed drag & drop showing an accept cursor for types that it didn't support.
Windows: Fixed inverted icons in "Explorer" submenu.
Linux: Fixed check for updates support for HTTP proxies.
macOS: Fixed dragging window by clicking on the empty space within toolbars and on the status bar.
Entering invalid data in registration dialog no longer assumes that it's a v3 key if it's too short to be one.

Options

Improved detection of keyboard shortcut conflicts.
Fixed importing v3 file formats that replace the built-in v4 ones.
Linux: When upgrading preferences from v3, the old settings will be moved to ~/.config/bcompare3 so reinstalling BC3 will still have them available.
Linux: Fixed updating settings from v3 to v4.

Portable Devices (MTP)

Windows: Fixed images copied to some portable devices (e.g., Creative Zen) not showing as images on the device.

Scripting

Added MOVETO command that accepts the same arguments as COPYTO.

Source Control

Windows: Fixed error message when the svn executable isn't found.

Text Views

Fixed "Never align differences" when using the "Patience Diff alignment".
Fixed "Find Whole Words Only" handling of non-western characters.
Fixed "Find" MRU handling when edit is auto-filled based on cursor position.

Text Compare

Fixed various issues with "View as Web Page".
Fixed WordPerfect conversion.

WebDAV

Fixed folders appearing as subfolders of themselves if the profile URL differed in unimportant ways from the one returned by the server.
Fixed errors loading subfolders as base folders because the server was returning all of the children in a LIST response even when requesting a depth of 0.
Fixed last modified times not appearing for certain date ranges.

Crashes

Fixed crash when double clicking in an inactive text editor.
Fixed crash during search after active control on find panel has been hidden.
Windows: Fixed crash on Windows 8 when accessibility services are running.
macOS: Fixed crash when using ~username as a base folder path.

4.0.0.18847 - September 1, 2014

This is the first official release of Beyond Compare version 4.

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Beyond Compare 4 Change Log

4.4.7.28397 - October 19, 2023

Notable Changes

File Formats

Folder Compare

Hex Compare

Installer

Misc

Options

Crashes

4.4.6.27483 - March 6, 2023

4.4.5.27371 - February 3, 2023

Notable Changes

File Formats

Folder Compare

FTP

Hex Compare

Installer

Misc

Crashes

4.4.4.27058 - November 4, 2022

Notable Changes

Folder Compare

Text Views

Crashes

4.4.3.26655 - July 20, 2022

Notable Changes

Cloud Services

File Formats

Installer

Misc

Picture Compare

Table Compare

Crashes

4.4.2.26348 - March 16, 2022

Notable Changes

4.4.1.26165 - December 20, 2021

Notable Changes

FTP

Misc

WebDAV

Crashes

4.4.0.25886 - August 13, 2021

Notable Changes

Cloud Services

File Views

Folder Compare

FTP

Installer

Misc

Picture Compare

Text Merge

Crashes

4.3.7.25118 - October 2, 2020

Changes

4.3.6.25063 - September 10, 2020

Changes

4.3.5.24893 - July 13, 2020

Notable Changes

Cloud Services

Command Line

Folder Compare

FTP

Installer

Misc

Options

Text Compare

Crashes

4.3.4.24657 - February 28, 2020

Command Line

File Formats

Folder Compare

FTP

Misc

Picture Compare

Reports

Text Compare

Crashes