Diff Anything 1.2 is a quality release in the literal sense: the same files produce more faithful results, difficult inputs fail more honestly, and every route into a comparison follows the same rules.
The visible change is a broader Free tier. The desktop app can now preview YAML, XML, CSV, environment files, HTTP responses, API schemas, folders, archives, PDF and Office documents, images, and binary files. Free previews are explicitly bounded: files up to 5 MiB per side, 10 new sessions per local day, the first 100 collection items, and the first 3 PDF page previews. The Free CLI remains focused on text and JSON.
The less visible work is in awkward inputs. Structured comparison now handles cases such as duplicate keys, repeated CSV keys, repeated HTTP headers, YAML multi-documents, XML namespace meaning, and masked environment values with explicit warnings when a result cannot be represented without ambiguity. Image comparison handles transparency and decoded-size budgets more carefully. PDF and Office handling keeps extracted text and rendered evidence distinct.
Everything stays local: there is no account, cloud comparison service, analytics, or telemetry. The point is not to claim that one engine can perfectly understand every format. It is to select a bounded specialist engine, show its limits, and keep desktop, CLI, Git, and CI behavior aligned.
The full release notes include the exact boundaries and screenshots: https://martingruner.com/blog/diff-anything-1-2
