Differences viewer for files

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Previous Difference / Next Difference Shift+F7 F7

Jump to the next or previous difference.

When the last or the first difference is reached, IntelliJ IDEA suggests clicking the arrow buttons or pressing F7/Shift+F7 once more and comparing other files modified locally. This behavior depends on the Go to the next file after reaching last change option in the Differences Viewer settings.

This behavior is supported only when the Differences Viewer is invoked from the Commit tool window Alt+0.

Compare Previous/Next File

Alt+LeftAlt+Right

Compare the local copy of the previous or next file with its update from the server.

Go To Changed File Ctrl+N

Display all changed files in the current change set and navigate to them. This action is only available when you review changes to multiple files.

Jump to Source

F4

Open the selected file in the editor. The caret is placed in the same position as in the Differences Viewer.

Viewers

Select a viewer mode: side-by-side or unified. The side-by-side mode has two panels, the unified mode has one panel.

You can edit code and perform the Apply, Append, Revert actions in both viewers.

You can change text only in the right-hand part of the side-by-side viewer, or in the lower line in the unified viewer.

You can edit only local versions of your files. You cannot edit files that have read-only status.

Whitespace

Define how the differences viewer should treat whitespaces.

• Do not ignore: white spaces are important, and all the differences are highlighted. This option is selected by default.

• Trim whitespaces: trim whitespaces if they appear in the end and at the beginning of a line (("\t", " ")).

  • If two lines differ in trailing whitespaces only, these lines are considered equal.

  • If two lines are different, trailing whitespaces are not highlighted in the By word mode.

• Ignore whitespaces: white spaces are not important, regardless of their location in the source code.

• Ignore whitespaces and empty lines: ignores whitespaces and empty lines. The following entities are ignored:

  • all whitespaces (as in the 'Ignore whitespaces' option)

  • all added or removed lines consisting of whitespaces only

  • all changes consisting of splitting or joining lines without changes to non-whitespace parts.

    For example, differences between a b c and a \n b c are not highlighted in this mode.

• Ignore imports and formatting: changes within import statements and whitespaces are ignored (whitespaces within String literals are respected though).

Highlighting mode

Select the way differences granularity is highlighted.

The available options are:

• Highlight words: modified words are highlighted

• Highlight lines: modified lines are highlighted

• Highlight split changes: if this option is selected, big changes are split into smaller changes.

  For example, A \n B and A X \n B X are treated as two changes instead of one.

• Highlight symbols: modified symbols are highlighted

• Do not highlight: if this option is selected, the differences are not highlighted at all.

  Use the Do not highlight option when you work with the files that were significantly modified. In such cases, highlighting might introduce additional difficulties during a review.

Collapse unchanged fragments

Collapse all the unchanged fragments in both files. The amount of non-collapsible unchanged lines is configurable in the Diff & Merge settings page. To open the Diff & Merge page, open settings by pressing Ctrl+Alt+S and navigate to Tools | Diff & Merge.

Synchronize scrolling

Click this button to scroll both differences panes simultaneously. If this button is released, each of the panes can be scrolled independently.

Settings

Open a list of available settings.

These commands are also available from the context menu of the differences viewer gutter.

Include into commit Alt+I

This checkbox only appears if you invoke the Differences Viewer from the Commit Changes dialog with multiple changed files (all of which are deselected), and you explore the differences between them and hit the last difference in a file.

Select this checkbox if you want to include the file you've reviewed into the commit.

Help

F1

Open a browser and show the corresponding help page.

Ctrl+Shift+Tab

Switch between the panes of the differences viewer. The active pane has the cursor.

Apply differences between panes (in case of the side-by-side viewer) or between lines (in case of the unified viewer).

The chevron buttons can change their behavior:

• Click and to apply changes. This behavior is the default one.

• Press Ctrl to change or to or and append changes.

Merge actions

N/A

Click this icon to invoke the list of options allowing you to compare different versions of a file to resolve a conflict.

Note that Base refers to the file version that the local and the repository versions originated from (initially displayed in the middle pane), while Middle refers to the resulting version.

Apply All Non-Conflicting Changes

Click this button to apply all non-conflicting changes. You can also make this behavior automatic, by selecting the checkbox Automatically apply non-conflicting changes in the Diff & Merge page of the Settings/Preferences dialog.

Apply Non-Conflicting Changes from the Left/Right Side

Click these buttons to merge non-conflicting changes from the left/right parts of the dialog.

Annotate with GitBlame

This option is only available from the context menu of the gutter.

Use this option to explore who introduced which changes to the repository version of the file, and when. The annotations view lets you see detailed information for each line of code, such as the version from which this line originated, the ID of the user who committed this line, and the commit date.

For more details on annotations, refer to VCS annotations.

Ctrl+Shift+D

Use this keyboard shortcut to show the popup menu of the most commonly used diff commands.

Ctrl+Shift+Tab

Use this keyboard shortcut to switch between the left and the right panes.

Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Shift+Z

Use this keyboard shortcut to undo/redo a merge operation. Conflicts will be kept in sync with the text.

Show Whitespaces

Select this check command to show whitespaces as the dots in the Differences Viewer .

Show Line Numbers

Select this check command to show line numbers in the Differences Viewer.

Show Indent Guides

Select this check command to have IntelliJ IDEA display vertical lines in the Differences Viewer to indicate positions of indents.

Soft-Wrap

Select this check command to have IntelliJ IDEA wrap the lines of code, when the dialog is resized.

Highlighting level

Use this menu item to select the highlighting level in the Differences Viewer. To learn more about the level of highlighting, refer to Change the highlighting level for a file.

Annotate

Select this check command to annotate the changes.

Accept/Append

Select these commands to accept or append the lines shown in the Differences Viewer.

Compare with Clipboard

Select this command to compare the file in the respective pane of the Differences Viewer with the contents of the Clipboard.

Annotate

Select this check command to annotate the changes.

Go to high-priority problems only/Go to next problem

Click one of these radio-buttons to define the way of navigating between the encountered problems.

Customize highlighting level

Click to show the slider to change the highlighting level in the Differences Viewer.

Show code lens on scrollbar hover

Enables viewing code outside of the visible area of the Differences Viewer when hovering the mouse over the scrollbar.