Ignore Options¶

The four ignore toggles in the comparison options bar let you suppress categories of differences that are not meaningful for your comparison. Toggles stack - all four can be active simultaneously. The comparison re-runs immediately each time you change a toggle.

Tip

These options affect what is highlighted, not the file content. Your files are unchanged.

For more complex, reusable rules such as glob patterns or regex exclusions, see Ignore Profiles (Pro).

aA - Ignore Case¶

Treats uppercase and lowercase letters as identical when computing the comparison.

Use when: comparing files from case-insensitive filesystems, config files where key casing varies between environments, or SQL scripts where keywords or identifiers may be capitalised differently.

Example: UserName and username on separate sides are treated as matching content.

Case differences visible before activating Ignore Case

No differences visible after activating Ignore Case

¶ - Ignore Line Endings¶

Treats CRLF (\r\n) and LF (\n) line endings as identical.

Use when: comparing a file edited on Windows against the same file on Unix or macOS. Without this toggle, every single line shows as changed even if the content is identical.

Example: A file with Windows CRLF line endings compared to the same file with Unix LF endings shows no changes when this toggle is active.

Ignore Line Endings toggle active

·⎵ - Ignore Trailing Whitespace¶

Ignores spaces and tabs at the end of each line when computing the comparison.

Use when: your editor or build tool silently adds or removes trailing spaces, and you do not want those invisible characters to appear as changes.

Example: A line ending with four trailing spaces on the left matches the same line with no trailing spaces on the right.

Ignore Trailing Whitespace toggle active

⎵⎵ - Ignore All Whitespace¶

Ignores all spacing differences, including leading indentation, spaces between tokens, and blank-line counts.

Use when: comparing files with different indent styles (2-space vs 4-space vs tab), or comparing a minified version of a file against a formatted version where the only structural differences are whitespace.

Example: A function indented with 4 spaces on the left matches the same function indented with 2 spaces on the right.

Note

This toggle is the most aggressive of the four. It can hide meaningful structural changes in whitespace-sensitive languages such as Python or YAML. Use it deliberately.