WinMerge 2.16.54 Release Notes

• About This Release
• What Is New in 2.16.54
• What Is New in 2.16.53 beta?
• Known issues

January 2026

About This Release

This is a WinMerge 2.16.54 stable release. This release replaces earlier WinMerge stable releases as a recommended release.

Please submit bug reports to our bug-tracker.

What Is New in 2.16.54

General

• BugFix: Cyrilic shortcuts do not work for main menukeyboard shortcuts
• BugFix: 2 recent-entries per project (#2990)
• Updated expat to version 2.7.3

Folder compare

• Add logInfo, logWarn, logError functions to filter expressions (PR #3131)
• Add new filter expression functions (if, ifEach, choose, chooseEach, andEach, orEach, notEach) (PR #3132)
• Add BaseName/IsFolder and new string transformation functions to filters (PR #3146)
• Add experimental customizable rename/move detection for folder comparison (PR #3126)

Options window

• Adjusted the height of the Options dialog and the position of the Defaults button

Shell extension

• BugFix: Add-AppxPackage fails if path ends with backslash (PR #3145)

Installer

• Removed build-time tools (lemon.exe, re2c.exe) from the installer package.

Translations

• New translation: Vietnamese (PR #3142)
• Translation updates:
• Brazilian (PR #3150)
• Chinese Simplified (PR #3156)
• French (PR #3137)
• German (PR #3148)
• Hungarian (PR #3149)
• Italian (PR #3147)
• Japanese
• Korean (PR #3125,#3127)
• Lithuanian (PR #3144,#3153)
• Polish (PR #3154,#3155)
• Turkish (PR #3152)
• Ukrainian (PR #3130)

What Is New in 2.16.53 Beta

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)