Help & Support

Getting Started

TextCompare is a browser-based diff tool. No installation, account, or configuration is needed. Here is how to run your first comparison in under a minute:

1. Open the tool — Go to textcompare.getinfotoyou.com. You will see two empty text panels labelled "Original" and "Revised".
2. Enter your texts — Paste your original (older) text into the left panel and your revised (newer) text into the right panel. You can also drag-and-drop a plain-text file onto either panel.
3. Choose your options — Use the options bar to select the diff mode (line, word, or character), the view (side-by-side or unified), and any ignore flags (case, whitespace, blank lines).
4. Compare — The diff updates automatically as you type, or press Ctrl+Enter to force a refresh. Green highlights indicate added content; red highlights indicate removed content; yellow-orange highlights indicate modified lines.
5. Share or download — Click Share to copy a link, or Download to save the diff as a .diff file.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Text is not comparing — no diff appears

If the diff shows no changes but you know differences exist, check the following:

• Verify both panels contain text. Look at the line count in each panel header — if one says "0 lines", that panel is empty.
• Check whether Ignore Case is enabled. If both texts differ only in capitalization and Ignore Case is on, the diff will show no changes by design.
• Check whether Ignore Whitespace is on. Differences that are purely spaces or tabs will be hidden.
• Ensure both panels contain the correct text — it is easy to accidentally paste the same text into both panels.

File upload is not working

TextCompare reads files as UTF-8 plain text. Common reasons an upload fails:

• Binary file format — PDF, Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), and image files cannot be read as text. Copy the text content manually from these formats.
• File too large — Uploads over 10 MB are blocked. If your file is larger, open it in a text editor and paste the relevant section.
• Encoding issue — Files saved in encodings other than UTF-8 (such as Windows-1252 or Latin-1) may display garbled characters. Re-save the file as UTF-8 in your text editor before uploading.

Share URL is too large or broken

Share URLs embed both texts as gzip-compressed Base64 data. Texts longer than roughly 30 KB (after compression) may produce URLs that exceed browser or server limits. Options when this happens:

• Download the diff as a .diff file and share the file instead of the URL.
• Trim the comparison to only the relevant section of each document.
• Use a file-sharing service (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) to share the original texts directly.

Performance is slow on large files

Files over 200 KB can take a few seconds to diff on older devices. To improve performance:

• Use line mode (the default) rather than word or character mode — it is significantly faster for large files.
• Enable Ignore Blank Lines to reduce the number of tokens the diff engine processes.
• If you only need to diff a specific section, copy and compare just that portion rather than the entire file.
• Close other browser tabs to free up memory, especially on mobile devices.

Browser Requirements

TextCompare requires a modern browser with JavaScript enabled. All features work in:

• Chrome 120 and later
• Firefox 121 and later
• Safari 17 and later (including iOS Safari)
• Edge 120 and later
• Samsung Internet 23 and later

The share URL feature requires the CompressionStream API, available in all the browsers listed above. The drag-and-drop file upload requires the File API, also supported in all current browsers. Internet Explorer is not supported.

Keyboard Shortcuts

These shortcuts work on the comparison tool page. Press ? at any time to view the shortcuts panel in the tool.

On macOS, replace Ctrl with Cmd for all shortcuts.

Tips for Best Results

Choose the right diff mode

Line mode is best for code, CSV data, and any document where entire lines are added or removed. Word mode is best for prose documents (articles, reports, contracts) where individual words change within a line. Character mode is best for short strings, passwords, or structured identifiers where a single character difference matters.

Use the ignore options strategically

If your documents were reformatted (different indentation, trailing spaces, or extra blank lines), enabling the corresponding ignore options will remove noise from the diff and surface only the meaningful content changes. Ignore options are applied before the diff runs, so they do not affect performance.

For code reviews, use the unified view

The unified view (single column, Git-style) is the standard format for code review comments. If you are posting a diff snippet into a pull request description, a code review tool, or a bug tracker, copy from the unified view to match the expected format.

For document collaboration, share the link before comparing

If you want a colleague to see the same diff, generate the share URL before you discuss the changes. The URL captures the state of both texts at the moment you click Share, so both parties see an identical view even if one of them later edits the texts.