Diff Checker

Software utilities designed for comparing text have a wide range of benefits, such as helping you check revisions when correcting projects made by others. They also come in handy for verifying release notes of updated applications, so that you can tell apart new features and changes.

Diff Checker is a simple program that can give you a hand when it comes to comparing any two text message or documents loaded from file. It doesn't have advanced options or configuration settings, making it ideal for casual users interested in a straightforward difference checker. Plus, it works even when you're offline.

It's really easy to get the tool up and running, thanks to the fact that there are no special requirements involved. On the other hand, it's necessary to sign up for a free account because you have to log into Diff Checker at startup.

As far as the interface is concerned, the application keeps things simple and intuitive, showing two empty panels for the original and changed text. How it works is that you have to paste the two text messages in the two panels, or load two text documents from the hard drive.

Once the information is processed, the app creates a split view of the two panels, adding two more areas on top to show you the exact differences. The first panel is red and the second is green, each containing highlighted parts of text where something is different. The difference can be a word, a character, an entire sentence, or just an extra blank space. The upper-right part of the window also reveals the total number of removals and additions (by word and by character).

You can switch from split to unified viewing mode, make live changes to the original and changed text before reprocessing, or enter full screen mode to get a better view and avoid distractions on the desktop. Besides comparing simple text, Diff Checker is capable of comparing PDFs and images.

It worked smoothly in our tests, and it was also able to load very large documents, although this took a pretty long time during which the app was unresponsive to commands. All aspects considered, Diff Checker delivers a simple solution for comparing text to spot differences with ease. Besides Windows, it runs on Mac and Linux. There's also a web version of Diff Checker that can be accessed from any computer with an active Internet connection. However, some users might prefer this offline edition for privacy-related reasons.