Originally a product for Microsoft Windows, the Beyond Compare team has contributed a fine diff tool to the Mac platform. Like Araxis Merge and DeltaWalker, it goes beyond (pun intended) comparing simple text and also allows diffing Word and PDF contents.
- Diffchecker Desktop has been architected to work identically on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
- The well-known UNIX DIFF is the default file format of the tool which lets developers have finger on the pulse of the program functioning process. ExamDiff is a very handy tool, but only if you are hip to programming.
- KDiff3 is a diff and merge program that compares or merges two or three text input files or directories, shows the differences line by line and character by character (!).
- Code Compare is a tool that can check and compare as well as merge files and folders. It is a code compare tool for Windows operating system and works accurately for any version of the operating system.
Active3 years, 6 months ago
I am looking for an application to compare two PDF files.
Application must:
- be able to highlight differences between the two documents
- be mac-compatible as I will be using it on a mac
- be free, I do not want to spend any money
I will be mostly using this for comparing the new versions of the apple developer license agreements (since I am an apple developer who is too lazy to read a 40+ page document every time a minor change is made)
The application does not need to be from the App Store, nor does it need to need to be official (some knockoff from GitHub will be fine as long as it does not contain any viruses or bundled crapware) all I need is for it to do what it is intended to do (compare PDF's) very well.
If you would like to go above and beyond, free to take on the challenge of developing the application yourself (or modifying an existing one).
Best Diff Tools
I won't use this application very often and will accept it in any of the following formats:
- Mac app store app
- Java app
- Web app
- AppleScript file (I will need to see the source code)
- Automator workflow
- basically anything that will run on Mac OS X Yosemite (non-beta) and perform the intended task effectively
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DeveloperACE![Imac toolbar disappeared Imac toolbar disappeared](https://www.git-tower.com/blog/content/posts/55-diff-tools-mac/filemerge.png)
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5 Answers
You can use DiffNow:
- it's free
- web-app diff tool
- works via pasting text; uploading files; using URLs
The only limitation is that files must be < 2048kb.
The sample on their site (first pdf vs. second pdf):
Tom5,85388 gold badges2828 silver badges5656 bronze badges
ᔕᖺᘎᕊᔕᖺᘎᕊ4,62366 gold badges2929 silver badges5959 bronze badges
compare
(command from ImageMagick)
If you want to compare the visual appearance of page 4 of
a.pdf
with page 6 of b.pdf
, you can use ImageMagick's command line tool compare
. Here is a variation of commands to try:(ImageMagick's frame/page counting is zero-based; so '
[3]
' means 'page 4'...) This will create 'delta' documents, where each pixel that is different between the pages is painted in red:- The first variant keeps a pale version of
a.pdf
as a background image to the page. - The second variant uses a resolution of
300 PPI
(instead of the default72 PPI
). - The third variant creates a white+red delta only (leaving away the pale background).
- The fourth variant does mark as red only those pixels which have a color difference of more than 5%.
It should be noted, that the comparison only works if the respective page sizes for the compared files are exactly identical.
diffpdf
(GUI application)
DiffPDF
is a GUI application which can process 2 or 3 PDF input and show the differences:- There is a mode that compares text content only, highlighting word and character differences.
- There is another mode that compares visual differences and highlights them.
The home page only offers a paying Windows version now, but earlier versions were free. You can grab the source code e.g. from Debian, it includes compilation instructions for OS X.
unor5,13344 gold badges2828 silver badges8585 bronze badges
Kurt PfeifleKurt Pfeifle
Download Itools For Mac
DiffPDF nowadays is an paid software for Windows only, but it was previously free and also available for OS X. You can still download such a previous version.
It allows both visual and textual comparison.
Michael SchmidMichael Schmid
When comparing PDF files, you have the choice between:
- comparing the contents (i.e. the actual text)
- comparing the pages as a whole (visual comparison).
While you might be looking for the first type of comparison, I wanted to offer a way to compare two PDF files page-by-page.
As I've had this requirement regularly in the past, and couldn't find the necessary software to perform the comparison, I wrote my own and made it available on GitHub. It's called pyPdfCompare and is available free of charge.
It runs fine on OS X and Windows but does require you to install Python 3, Ghostscript and ImageMagick. Furthermore, you'll need to perform a
pip install
for the libraries it uses.It may be a little too technical and/or not exactly what you were looking for, but I wanted to offer the option anyway, for the sake of completeness.
Tom5,85388 gold badges2828 silver badges5656 bronze badges
ƘɌỈSƬƠƑƘɌỈSƬƠƑ
For your use case, comparing the text and discarding all formatting and non-text elements would work well. You can run the
pdftotext
utility on each file and then a text comparison tool on the result. On OS X, you can install pdftotext
from various free software distribution channels such as Brew or MacPorts, it's part of the poppler
package.Cas Cremers's
pdfdiff.py
script automates the running of pdftotext
(which needs to be installed separately) and of a diff viewer (ditto).The result is similar to DiffNow cited by ᔕᖺᘎᕊ, I think they use
pdftotext
internally and plug the output into a text diff webapp.Community♦
GillesGilles3,90133 gold badges2323 silver badges4242 bronze badges
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged osxpdfcomparison or ask your own question.
FileMerge
Being part of its developer toolset, Apple's own merge tool comes at no additional costs. It might not be the most elegant tool, but it's definitely a solid one that does the job of comparing & merging text.
Beyond Compare
Originally a product for Microsoft Windows, the Beyond Compare team has contributed a fine diff tool to the Mac platform. Like Araxis Merge and DeltaWalker, it goes beyond (pun intended) comparing simple text and also allows diffing Word and PDF contents. In its 'Pro Version', it also supports merging.
Araxis Merge
![Diff Diff](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126405654/534814335.png)
One of the few diff tools that works with more than just text and image files, Araxis Merge lets you also compare office documents (like MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, or ODF). For people working on both Windows and Mac, it's great to know that a single license is valid for both platforms.
NEW: Image Diffing in Tower! Our popular Git client Tower now supports Image Diffing for a variety of formats (including PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, JPEG2000, and HEIC). In both the Working Copy and various History / Changeset views, you can now see the actual images - and how they were changed! Try it yourself - for free!
DeltaWalker
Just like Araxis, the DeltaWalker app also lets you compare office files. However, it goes one step further by letting you compare file archives like ZIP, JAR, and TAR files. Also, if you're regularly performing comparisons on a folder basis, DeltaWalker shines with a great performance in this area.
Kaleidoscope
File Diff Tool For Mac
Originally developed by 'Sofa', Kaleidoscope was later acquired by 'BlackPixel' - who did a great job in making it one of the best diff & merge tools for the Mac. Its beautiful user interface and great image diffing capabilities are what set it apart.
Free Alternatives
In case you're looking for a free alternative to the standard FileMerge app, you should also have a look at P4Merge and DiffMerge.
Both can't compare in terms of features and user interface with their commercial competitors - but make for a valid alternative on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Both can't compare in terms of features and user interface with their commercial competitors - but make for a valid alternative on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Integrations
Another aspect to watch out for is integrations: before choosing your favorite tool, you should make sure that it plays nicely with the rest of your tool chain. I can already confirm that all of the mentioned tools work seamlessly at least with Tower, our own Git client.
If you don't need the power of a dedicated Diff tool application, the integrated diff views in Tower might be absolutely sufficient for you:
In case you don't know Tower: it's the Git desktop client for Mac and Windows that helps thousands of developers and designers to easily & productively work with the Git version control system. Try it 30 days for free!
Conclusion
Diff & merge apps are amongst the most underestimated tools. But a good one can be really helpful in a lot of situations. Try one of the above and see for yourself!
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