WinMerge 2.16.54.2 Release Notes

• About This Release
• What Is New in 2.16.54.2
• What Is New in 2.16.54
• What Is New in 2.16.53 beta?
• Known issues

February 2026

About This Release

This is a WinMerge 2.16.54.2 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 2.16.54.2

General

• Add automatic crash detection and reporting (PR #3167)

Appearance

• BugFix: white flash after opening WinMerge with Dark Mode (#3210)

Folder compare

• BugFix: Fixed “Expand all subfolders” not working when rename/move detection is enabled
• BugFix: Fixed incorrect results or crashes during recompare (F5) when "Merge renamed items into a single item" is enabled
• BugFix: Fixed an issue where the Comparison Result showed 0 items after selecting “Refresh Selected” from the folder comparison context menu when rename/move detection is enabled
• BugFix: Fixed the folder comparison window not updating after saving renamed files in file comparison
• BugFix: Fixed incorrect file comparison being opened for rename/move items in 3-way folder comparison
• BugFix: Prevent sorting while directory comparison is in progress
• BugFix: Delayed file opening on double-click to prevent leftover clicks from affecting other windows
• BugFix: Display each file extension when merged renamed items have different extensions
• BugFix: Optimized column reloading and fixed a ReflectGetdispinfo-related crash

Options dialog

• BugFix: Request to resize text boxes (#3163)

Plugins

• BugFix: Fixed handling of empty replacement arguments in the Replace plugin
• BugFix: Fixed incorrect substitution of plugin arguments (${1}, ${2}, …) by properly parsing the argument string

Archive support

• Update 7-zip to 26.00

Manual

• Fixes and completion of French translation including complete Manual (PR #3182)

Translations

• Translation updates:
  • Brazilian (#3164,PR #3171)
  • Chinese Simplified (PR #3161,#3169)
  • French (PR #3165,#3182)
  • German (PR #3175)
  • Hungarian (PR #3173)
  • Italian (PR #3170)
  • Japanese
  • Korean (PR #3157)
  • Lithuanian (PR #3177)
  • Polish (PR #3158,#3176)
  • Portuguese (PR #3179)
  • Russian (PR #3159,#3160)
  • Turkish (PR #3178)

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)