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I use meld on Linux and I am able to compare two pieces of text without having to save them in files. Is there something similar for Mac and Windows?

Asad Iqbal
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    This question comes in "software tools commonly used by programmers". why was it closed? – Asad Iqbal Apr 05 '13 at 02:07
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    I never found one like WinMerge where you can paste from clipboard and compare! Until i decided to look for online tools. [DiffNow](http://www.diffnow.com/) Solved it for me. – Miguel Silva Aug 14 '13 at 14:59
  • Kaleidoscope can do this, see my answer here (to a similar question that *wasn't* closed, even less specific than this one): http://stackoverflow.com/a/23871772/381233 – newenglander May 26 '14 at 13:55
  • You can use [KDiff3](http://kdiff3.sourceforge.net/). When the program opens, cancel out of the dialog for selecting files. You will then have a split-pane and you can paste into either side to get the diff. Unfortunately you can't edit the text, so you need to prepare it before pasting it. – Carl G May 01 '15 at 16:49

3 Answers3

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BBEdit for macOS does a nice diff of either files on disk or documents being edited.

That would allow you to make two empty docs, paste your text into each of them and run the diff.

BBEdit is a paid-for app, but it has a free mode that will let you do what you are looking for.

Monolo
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  • textwrangler is sunsetted now, but I was still able to get it from App Store and it does the job perfectly. – Mark Ch Dec 15 '18 at 19:40
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    TextWrangler is now BBEdit and still free! It's time to switch. https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/ – Jugal Panchal Oct 25 '21 at 23:03
  • @JugalPanchal thanks for reminding me about this old post. I have updated link and added a line to highlight that there is a free mode in the app. – Monolo Oct 26 '21 at 12:59
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The meld tool has been ported to Mac OS X and is available via "fink".

Another link is this one.

You will need to install fink first however, and I believe you can get started here.

Dave Newman
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    `meld` is also available via macports, possibly homebrew as well. If youre used to using a package manager and the command line you really should get one of the OS X ones such as Fink, MacPorts, or Homebrew - youll fined them invaluable. – prodigitalson Apr 04 '13 at 17:11
  • For a GUI text editor on Mac, I've been a user of BBEdit for years, which also has a diff tool. BBEdit is not free however. – Dave Newman Apr 04 '13 at 17:14
  • not to start a war, but BBEdit is horrible when compared to SublimeText or Textmate 1.5 :-) Textmate2 is also open source now and thus free. While i prefer 1.5 because of some of the changes to UI, its still better than BBEdit IMO. – prodigitalson Apr 04 '13 at 17:17
  • @pordigitalson I've just been a user of BBEdit for so long, its become a habit. Kinda like people that can't move away from vi or emacs. ;) – Dave Newman Apr 04 '13 at 17:41
  • Thanks all. It seems that I need to start using Macports and homebrew. – Asad Iqbal Apr 05 '13 at 17:07
  • Highly recommend [homebrew](http://brew.sh/) over fink and Macports, and Meld works well in there :) You need to install [XQuartz](https://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/) as well. – rcoup Feb 20 '14 at 01:27
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NotePad++ with the Compare plugin on Windows:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/npp-compare/

NotePad++

Anne
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