Diff 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 Diff Viewer settings.

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 Diff Viewer.

Viewers

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

You can edit code and perform the Accept, 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 Diff 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 characters: 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 on 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 Diff Viewer gutter.

Swap Sides

Click this button to swap the sides in the Diff Viewer. This action is available when you are comparing two files, a file with the Clipboard contents, or when you open a blank Diff Viewer and paste the contents you want to compare. For more information, refer to Compare files, folders, and text sources.

Include into commit Alt+I

This checkbox only appears if you invoke the Diff 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 Diff Viewer. The active pane has the caret.

Accept

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

Compare Contents

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 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.

Resolve Simple Conflicts

Click this button to resolve simple conflicts (for example, if the beginning and the end of the same line have been modified in different file revisions) and merging the changes.

Such conflicts are not resolved with the Apply non-conflicting changes actions since you must make sure that they are resolved properly.

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 information about 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.

Annotate

Enable this option to annotate the changes.

Show Whitespaces

Enable this option to show whitespaces as the dots in the Diff Viewer.

Show Line Numbers

Enable this option to show line numbers in the Diff Viewer.

Show Indent Guides

Enable this option to have IntelliJ IDEA display vertical lines in the Diff Viewer to indicate positions of indents.

Soft-Wrap

Enable this option 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 Diff Viewer. To learn more about the level of highlighting, refer to Change the highlighting level for a file.

Annotate

Enable this option to annotate the changes.

Accept/Append

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

Compare with Clipboard

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

Switch to Three-Side Viewer

This option is available only when you are comparing two files against each other. It allows you to load a third file and add it to the comparison.

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 Diff Viewer.

Show code lens on scrollbar hover

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