In your notification area
Compare the last two
pieces of text you copied.
Text, a file, or a path. Copy another and see what changed.
01 Install
Get ClipDiff for Windows.
Windows 10 (1809+) or Windows 11 · x64
Download the self-contained ZIP from GitHub Releases; the runtime is included. Extract it and run ClipDiff.exe. Keep ClipDiff.ShellExtension.dll beside it.
The smaller net10 ZIP requires the x64 .NET 10 Desktop Runtime. To update, quit ClipDiff and extract to a new folder.
02 Use
Copy. Copy. Compare.
Start ClipDiff. Copy the older value, then the newer. Use:
- Text — copied from any app.
- A file — copy the file itself in Explorer.
- A path — copy the full path to a text file; ClipDiff reads its saved contents.
Mix these freely, or copy two files together.
Use Copy as path in Explorer or copy a full path from your editor. One or two absolute Windows paths are accepted, one per line, optionally double-quoted.
Press CtrlAltD, or choose Show Diff in the app menu.
Text files up to 16 MiB are read. Binary or unusable files become a filename and reason. Windows .lnk targets are followed.
03 Explorer
Compare from Explorer.
ClipDiff must already be running. On Windows 11, look under Show more options. No administrator setup is needed.
Compare with current ClipDiff capture
Right-click a file after your first capture. The command includes the captured filename when available.
Compare two selected files with ClipDiff
Select exactly two files; no prior capture is needed. The release DLL must be beside ClipDiff.exe.
Both open the diff without changing your clipboard. For a pair, Explorer’s first file is Previous.
04 Diff viewers
Use your diff viewer.
Installed tools such as WinMerge, Beyond Compare and Meld should be detected automatically. Select yours under Diff viewer.
Missing? Use Choose program... to select its executable. Custom tools must accept two file paths as arguments.
Supported viewers and setup details.
No diff tool? Use the default Built-in viewer: side-by-side or unified, with inline highlights, an Ignore spacing option and a command to copy the diff. It also handles external-viewer launch failures.
05 Privacy
Your copies stay on your computer.
ClipDiff never uploads captures. It keeps two accepted copies and their file paths in memory, captured after startup; it cannot recover earlier clipboard history. Quitting discards them. Closing the diff window does not.
ClipDiff honours Windows clipboard exclusions for monitoring, history and cloud clipboard. Unmarked secrets look like ordinary text. A clipboard clear within 60 seconds can remove the latest capture; this safeguard is best effort.
External viewers write temporary files
The built-in viewer keeps comparisons in memory. An external viewer needs two read-only plaintext files under %LOCALAPPDATA%\ClipDiff\Temp. ClipDiff asks for consent before the first external comparison. Cancelling uses the built-in viewer without creating files.
ClipDiff attempts cleanup after the viewer exits, on quit and on next launch. Crashes or the viewer can leave copies behind. Use the built-in viewer to avoid this disk exposure.
Settings contain preferences, not captures. Secure memory erasure, system paging, clipboard history and other apps’ copies are outside ClipDiff’s control.
06 About
About ClipDiff
More soon.