WinMerge 2.16.53 Release Notes

• About This Release
• What Is New in 2.16.53 beta?
• Known issues

January 2026

About This Release

This is a WinMerge beta release which is meant for preview the current state of WinMerge development. This release is not recommended for the production.

Please submit bug reports to our bug-tracker.

What Is New in 2.16.53

General

• Allow comparing files by editing header path (Ctrl+L / Alt+D) (PR #3093)

File compare

• Async binary comparison for “Selected files are identical” dialog (PR #3060)

Binary compare

• BugFix: Fixed crash when an error occurs while opening files in the binary comparison window.

Image compare

• [ImageCompare] Problems with unsupported formats (#3044)

• Update freeimage to 3.19.10

Webpage compare

• BugFix: Fixed garbled filenames displayed in Web comparison tabs and header bar

Folder compare

• BugFix: This line cannot be displayed correctly after translation. msgid "Failed to extract archive.\nCompare as text file?" (#3073)

• BugFix: Unexpected file closure when moving files from a comparison (#3088)

• Add Display Filter to Folder Compare (PR #3106)

• Add folder statistics filter attributes and helper menu (PR #3111)

• Introduce isWithin() and inRange() for explicit inclusive/exclusive range checks (PR #3124)

Options dialog

• Add option to select user data location (AppData or Documents) (PR #3078)

Plugins

• CompareMSExcelFiles: Replace line breaks with space in MSExcel formulas (PR #3028)

• Updated jq to 1.8.1

Translations

• Translation updates:

  • Brazilian (PR #3034,#3064,#3085,#3101,#3107,#3121)
  • Chinese Simplified (PR #3035,#3077,#3086,#3097,#3123)
  • Chinese Traditional (PR #3052,#3073,WinMerge/frhed#26)
  • Corsican (PR #3119)
  • French (PR #3072,#3105,#3106)
  • German (PR #3037,#3068,#3081,#3098,#3108,#3115)
  • Hungarian (PR #3036,#3061,#3080,#3100,#3116)
  • Italian (PR #3033,#3062,#3099,#3113,#3118)
  • Japanese
  • Korean (PR #3062,#3082)
  • Lithuanian (PR #3032,#3065,#3087,#3104,#3114)
  • Polish (PR #3050,#3089,#3103,#3112,#3122)
  • Turkish (PR #3043,#3063,#3083,#3102,#3111,#3117)

Manual

• Added FAQ about file selection order in Windows Explorer. (#3090,#3094)

Known issues

• Pressing OK in the Options window while the INI file specified by /inifile is open for comparison in WinMerge may corrupt the file. (#2685)
• Suggestion to make the result of image comparison more reliable (#1391)
• Crashes when comparing large files (#325)
• Very slow to compare significantly different directories (#322)
• Vertical scrollbar breaks after pasting text (#296)