Confold

Confold is a folder and file comparison tool for Windows, macOS and Linux, created by Juan Garcia Longaron. The program shows the top level of a directory tree the moment Compare is pressed and fills in the rest as you explore. Confold compares local folders with FTP, S3, Nuxeo, Paperless and other sources, displays word-level and character-level differences, copies only what has changed and builds a dry-run plan before every migration or sync.

★★★★★

5.0(1 ratings)

• Three working modes. Compare is for exploring differences manually, Migrate brings a destination in line with a source, and Sync reconciles both sides in two directions. All three modes run on the same comparison engine, so results stay consistent in each of them.
• Comparison without a full scan. The top level of the tree appears as soon as Compare is pressed, and the contents of each folder are calculated when it is opened. Folders that are never expanded are never compared, which cuts the time spent on large structures.
• Virtualized tree with live counters. The folder tree loads lazily and shows live status counts for new, different, identical and missing files. Virtualization keeps the list responsive even with hundreds of thousands of entries.
• Switching the compare method without a rescan. The comparison method can be changed during a session without walking the directories again. Data that was already collected is reused, so a review with a different criterion is immediate.
• Word-level and character-level diffs. Text files are shown in side-by-side panes with changes highlighted by word and by character. Hunk navigation moves straight from one difference to the next without manual scrolling.
• Streaming of multi-gigabyte files. Large files are compared and copied in 64 KiB windows instead of being loaded into memory. A byte-by-byte comparison stops at the first difference, so nothing more than necessary is read.
• A real diff for files too large to load. When a file cannot be loaded in full, Confold shows only the changed regions with surrounding context, in the manner of git diff. Large binaries open in a hex view, and results are never truncated silently.
• Migration with a dry-run plan. Migrate copies new items, overwrites different ones and deletes extras from the destination. Before anything changes it produces a dry-run plan with per-item checkboxes, and the apply step streams the data and can be cancelled at any moment.
• Verified move. When deleting the origin after a move is selected, Confold re-verifies every byte that landed in the destination before removing anything. The operation is all-or-nothing, so a partial move can never leave files stranded.
• Bidirectional synchronization. Sync reconciles two folders in both directions with conflict resolution, on the same engine as Migrate. The user confirms each decision, and nothing is copied on a guess.
• Local and remote sources. Besides the local disk, the program compares against FTP, SFTP, S3 storage, Nuxeo, Paperless and other sources. A remote tree is explored and reconciled with the same workflow as a local one.
• Finder integration on macOS. With the option enabled, the context menu offers Confold Select Origin and Confold Compare, so two folders are compared with two right-clicks. Recent folders are remembered across restarts, and stale paths are flagged in red before comparing.
• confold:// deep links. The confold:// URL scheme launches comparisons from scripts, automations and shell integrations. It is the mechanism for opening a specific pair of folders without typing paths by hand.
• Semantic document compare and merge. Through the CLI and the public agent skill, Confold combines diverged Markdown or plain-text variants, with an optional common base. Confold does not call a language model itself: the agent the user already works with proposes the result, and the program only validates it.
• Review before anything is written. Every input is fingerprinted with SHA-256, stale analyses are rejected, and the proposal is validated and shown as deterministic diffs. The apply command always creates a new file and never overwrites an input or an existing file.
• Deterministic fast paths. When the answer is already clear, the merge is resolved without model involvement, and only ambiguous prose reaches the agent in a bounded, versioned bundle. A proposal cannot contradict these paths and must account for both variants of the document.

Confold was created in 2026 by the developer Juan Garcia Longaron, who is the author and copyright holder of the program. Versions 0.5.1, 0.6.0 and 0.6.1 are already distributed through winget for Windows, and the program is also available for macOS and Linux. Semantic protocol v1 for documents works today through the CLI and the public agent skill, while the guided desktop workflow and provider settings are on the roadmap.

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