Orbital Delta

One window, three comparisons: text, hex, or a folder tree.

Text Diff Mode -- Two files, line by line.

Hex Diff Mode -- Two files, byte by byte.

Folder Diff Mode -- Two directory trees with differences in structure, size, date, and contents.

Text Diff Mode

Changed lines are paired so you can read across them, and within those lines Orbital Delta picks out the specific words that moved. You see what changed, not just that something did.

Set your own rules for what counts: ignore case, ignore trailing whitespace, ignore all whitespace, ignore blank lines. Ignored lines don't vanish — they stay on screen, dimmed, so you always know what was set aside.

Hex Diff Mode

A proper hex view with offsets, hex columns and the text those bytes represent.

Insert a single byte at the front of a file and most comparison tools will tell you that everything after it is different. Orbital Delta runs a real byte-level diff and realigns around inserted and deleted bytes, marking the gap on the side that's missing them. A one-byte change reads as a one-byte change.

Folder Diff Mode

Folders containing differences open on the first look; the ones still collapsed carry a count.

You decide what "identical" means. Matching size and date is fast and usually right, with an adjustable tolerance for filesystems that round timestamps. Size alone is useful after a copy that lost dates. SHA-256 of the contents is exact, and Orbital Delta only hashes files whose sizes already match, so it stays quick.

Folder Diff Deep Dive

Double-click any file that exists on both sides of a Folder diff and it opens in text or hex. The folder comparison doesn't go anywhere — it stays in memory, so coming back is instant and nothing is rescanned. You land on the row you came from, still selected, still scrolled into view, with its folders open.

Better still, don't come back at all. ⌥+⌘+↓ walks straight to the next differing file, and the bar keeps count of where you are. A folder comparison becomes a queue rather than a place you keep returning to.

It cannot change your files. No save, no merge, no network.

Orbital Delta opens only what you hand it, and never writes to either side. There's no save button because there's nothing to save.

It's sandboxed with read-only access to the files and folders you choose, and it has no network entitlement. Nothing leaves your device because nothing can.

Rose left/removed. Green right/added. Amber changed. Same code in every mode.

Color means exactly one thing, in every mode. Rose is left-only or removed. Green is right-only or added. Amber is present on both sides but different.

The greens lean toward teal so they stay separable from the rose for the most common forms of color blindness.

A ribbon on the right is a map of the whole file. Click to jump.

Down the right edge is a ribbon: a visual scale drawing of the whole comparison, every difference in its true position and relative size. A file with one changed line near the end looks different at a glance from one that changed throughout. Click anywhere on it to jump.

Designed for rapid diff reviews

A comprehensive set of keyboard shortcuts to stay in your flow during a diffing session. Move between differences with the arrow keys. Switch modes with a number. Press ⌘+/ to view an overlay of all shortcuts.

Fast Where It Counts

Comparisons run off the main thread and cancel the moment you change something, so the window never stops responding — even when you point it at a large tree. A one-byte insert does not paint the rest of the file red.