ReleaseNotes

# 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)