Diffoniq 2.0

WDiff32 is now Diffoniq. Same program, same developer, same line — the version you know as WDiff32 1.59 continues here. Only the name changed. The "32" once marked the Win32 version that arrived in 1996, back when the alternative was 16-bit Windows; today it reads like a limitation the program never had. Everything you had stays yours: your licence unlocks 2.0, and your settings are picked up automatically the first time you start it.

Version 2.0 is a rewrite. The list below is the part you will notice; the complete list lives in the help under What's New in Version 2.0.

Highlights

Full Unicode support. UTF-8 and UTF-16 files, international file names, accented and non-Latin paths. If you ever saw a mangled umlaut or a file you could not open by name, that is over.

Archives are just folders. Beyond ZIP: 7-Zip, RAR, tar (also compressed), CAB and ISO open like a directory and compare like one — including an archive inside an archive, to any depth. A renamed archive is recognised by its content rather than its extension, and accented names in old ZIPs written by pre-Unicode tools finally display correctly. Archives are read: Diffoniq looks inside them, it does not write back into them.

Folder synchronisation. File > Synchronize… previews and runs a mirror or update sync straight from the directory comparison on screen — both directions, deletions to the Recycle Bin where Windows offers one, cancellable. The same job runs headlessly from the command line with /sync, built for the Task Scheduler: a dry run by default, and in mirror mode files recognised as renamed or moved are renamed instead of copied again.

Comparison reports. File > Export Report… turns what is on screen into a self-contained HTML page, plain text, or JSON for scripts — for a folder, an archive or a single file. Both roots and the options in effect are recorded in the header, and entries inside an archive stay marked as such. Items whose contents were not verified stay marked unverified; they are never reported as identical. Headlessly, /report … --out <file> does the same for scheduled runs.

Rename and move detection. A file that moved or was renamed shows up as one pair rather than as one deletion plus one addition.

Use Diffoniq as another program's diff viewer. Started with two paths, it opens the comparison straight away — that is all git difftool, TortoiseGit/TortoiseSVN, Total Commander or WinSCP need. /read-only locks editing for one run (or /read-only-left / /read-only-right for a single side) when the host hands over a temporary copy, and /no-backup keeps a version-controlled working tree clean.

Built for large inputs. Directory scans run in parallel on both sides and within each side; on a network share the background hashing raises its own thread count, because there it is response time rather than bandwidth that sets the limit. A persistent content-hash cache means that comparing the same large tree a second time finishes in a fraction of the first run's time. In 1.x the scan was single-threaded, and the content check it did run blocked the window and was forgotten when you closed the comparison.

Also new

Converter pipeline (compare PDF, Word, SQLite or image metadata as text through external converters you configure — the converters themselves are not bundled) · saved configurations of both paths and both filters · a proper exclude-pattern editor · reworked wildcard filters that no longer stop the subdirectory scan · new status bar and two-line pane header with size, line count, encoding and line terminator · reworked Find with match count and highlighting · multi-level undo and redo · standard Windows print dialog · manual and once-a-day update check (nothing is ever downloaded or installed on its own) · MSI installer and a portable ZIP that runs from a USB stick · Third-Party Notices in the About box.

Upgrading from WDiff32 1.x

Your licence. Registered WDiff32 users upgrade to 2.0 free of charge — a valid 1.x key unlocks Diffoniq 2.0 and stays valid throughout the 2.x line. Updates within 2.x are free; a future major version is a paid upgrade, typically offered at a discount to existing licence holders. Registration by key is gone: 2.0 uses signed licence files and works offline, with no activation. Your 1.x registration travels inside the settings file described below — so if you install 2.0 on a new machine without bringing that file, write to order@diffoniq.com with your registration name and key, and you will get your licence file.

Your settings come with you. On its first start, Diffoniq copies wdiff.ini from %APPDATA%\WDiff\ to %APPDATA%\Diffoniq\diffoniq.ini, together with the hash cache. It is a file copy, not a selection, so everything WDiff32 ever stored comes across: window geometry, screen font, all colours, comparison and directory options, both lists of recent paths, both lists of exclude filters, the search history, saved configurations and the printer settings. Your old folder is left untouched, and 1.x keeps working beside 2.0. Three things worth knowing:

64-bit only. Diffoniq 2.0 is released as a 64-bit build; there is no 32-bit download. If you run WDiff32 on 32-bit Windows, 1.x keeps working, but 2.0 will not install.

The help is HTML now, opening in your browser instead of a .chm file.

Changed or removed

  1. The executable is Diffoniq.exe, not WDiff32.exe. Anything pointing at the old name needs updating: git difftool configuration, Tortoise settings, Total Commander buttons, shortcuts, scripts.
  2. Only 64-bit builds are released (MSI and portable ZIP are both -x64).
  3. Two keys do something else than in 1.x. F3 used to open the file selection and is now Find Next; F2 (Save) is no longer assigned. The new standards are Ctrl+O to open, Ctrl+S to save, F5 to refresh, Ctrl+1 / Ctrl+2 for the left/right file view. Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert keep working alongside Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V.
  4. Registration is replaced by licence files. Your 1.x registration is carried over together with your settings (see Upgrading above) — but the registration dialog is gone, so there is nowhere to type a key. If you set 2.0 up on a different machine without bringing your old configuration along, ask us for a licence file instead of looking for that dialog.
  5. No more .chm help file. The help is HTML and opens in the default browser.
  6. Binary files are summarised, not line-diffed. A binary pair is compared byte by byte in a single pass and summarised: its size, plus the offset of the first difference — or, when the files match to the last byte, their content hash. That replaces the slow line diff of raw bytes.
  7. Unknown command-line switches are rejected with a message and exit code 3 instead of being ignored silently. A 1.x script passing an unsupported switch will now fail — while the 1.x spelling with an attached value (/t4, /gs-) works again.
  8. Backups keep the full file name: notes.txt.BAK instead of notes.BAK, so test.h and test.c no longer share one backup. Clean-up or exclusion rules written for the old names no longer match.
  9. Settings live in %APPDATA%\Diffoniq\diffoniq.ini. The old folder stays where it is; if you back up or sync your configuration, adjust the path.
  10. Menus reorganised: display toggles moved to View, License and Description now live under Help, and commands that do not apply to the current view are greyed out instead of silently doing nothing.

System requirements

Windows 10/11, 64-bit. Windows on ARM: runs under the built-in x64 emulation. There is no native ARM64 build, and we do not test on ARM hardware.

Available as an MSI installer (per machine) and as a portable ZIP that runs without installation.

Known limitations

Diffoniq compares and merges two sides — there is no three-way merge. There is no syntax highlighting. Archives are read, not written back into. Remote sources such as FTP or cloud storage are not accessed directly; the documented route is a mounted drive (see the help). Diffoniq is Windows-only.