v1.6.0

Added

• Portable users now get update notifications too. Previously the
  auto-update banner only fired for installed copies; portable users
  had to manually check the Releases page. A new BrowserNotifyUpdateService
  queries the GitHub Releases REST API directly and surfaces
  available updates via the same banner. Clicking Install opens
  the Releases page in the default browser so the user can download
  the latest DiffViewer-Setup.exe (recommended) or
  DiffViewer-portable.exe. Honors the same Settings → Updates
  controls (auto-update behavior, check frequency, include
  pre-releases, skip-this-version). In Automatic mode the banner
  silently demotes to NotifyOnly behavior — opening a browser tab
  unprompted on every startup would be hostile UX, so portable
  users always click Install themselves.

v1.5.0

Added

• DiffViewer-Setup.exe installer alongside the existing portable
  download. The new installer puts DiffViewer under
  %LocalAppData%\DiffViewer\ with a Start Menu shortcut and
  subscribes to the in-app auto-update channel. No admin / UAC
  prompt. Per-release artifacts on GitHub now include the Setup
  installer plus Velopack delta packages, so subsequent updates are
  typically small downloads (single-digit MB) instead of full ~70 MB
  redownloads. Existing portable users are unaffected — the portable
  exe still ships, still self-extracts on first run, and still
  requires manual re-download for updates.
• Auto-update banner gets a "Skip this version" button. Persists
  the skipped version into settings.json so future checks for the
  same version stay quiet across launches. Detection of a newer
  version overwrites the previous skip and shows the banner again.
• Periodic re-check timer for auto-updates. Driven by the
  Settings → Updates → "Check frequency" dropdown (StartupOnly /
  Hourly / Every six hours / Daily / Weekly). StartupOnly opts
  out of periodic checks entirely; the others schedule a re-check
  after each Check/Dismiss/Skip. If the banner is still
  visible at tick time the recheck is skipped (the user is still
  looking at a previous notification).
• Auto-update banner at the top of the main window. Replaces
  the silent placeholder from the previous Phase 2.1 / 2.2
  iterations:
  • In Automatic mode, the banner appears once a downloaded
    update is queued ("Update vX.Y.Z ready — will install on next
    launch") so users know what is happening.
  • In NotifyOnly mode (the default), the banner appears as soon
    as an update is detected, with an Install button that
    triggers the download + apply-on-next-launch sequence.
  • Either mode's banner has Dismiss (session-scoped) and
    Skip this version (persists) buttons.
• Settings → Updates section. Three new settings control how
  DiffViewer handles available updates from GitHub Releases. The
  settings are inert on portable / from-source builds (those have
  never checked for updates) and become live when the upcoming
  Velopack-installed channel ships:
  • Auto-update behavior — NotifyOnly (default for new and
    migrated installs), Automatic, or Disabled. NotifyOnly
    is the safe default: silent auto-updates are opt-in.
  • Check frequency — StartupOnly / Hourly / EverySixHours
    / Daily (default) / Weekly.
  • Include pre-release versions — off by default; wired
    through to the underlying GitHub release source.
  • Dropdowns display friendly labels ("Every six hours" instead
    of the raw EverySixHours enum identifier).
• settings.json schema bumps v6 → v7 → v8. Both migrations are
  no-ops: all new fields default to safe values, so pre-v6 files
  load with the same effective behaviour they had before.

v1.4.0

Changed

• Lines with no intra-line spans now paint with the strong
  (intra-line) tint across the full row, not the soft line tint.
  Previously, pure inserts/deletes and paired-but-not-shown changes
  (intra-line off, or paired lines the similarity policy demoted)
  rendered with the same faint background as everything else in the
  hunk — leaving the user with a subtle "something changed" signal
  but no visual emphasis on the changed line itself. The new rule is
  uniform: if there are no inner red/green spans, the whole row gets
  the strong tint ("all of this is the change"); if there are spans,
  the soft yellow ModifiedLineBackground stays as the base layer and
  the colorizer overlays the strong spans on top. This applies in
  side-by-side and inline modes, and matches the strong colors the
  hunk overview bar already uses for its mini-map markers.

Fixed

• Inline-mode line-number gutter now shows source-file lines
  instead of sequential inline-buffer row indices. The inline
  view interleaves rows from the old and new files into a single
  buffer; AvalonEdit's built-in ShowLineNumbers margin numbered
  those rows 1, 2, 3 ... — so a row that was actually line 15 of
  the new file could display as 17 if two earlier rows were
  deletions with no new-side counterpart. A new
  InlineLineNumberMargin (backed by the pure-logic
  InlineLineNumberResolver) reads the per-row
  (OldLine, NewLine) mapping the inline builder already
  produces and shows NewLine ?? OldLine: context and insertion
  rows show their new-file line, pure-deletion rows show their
  old-file line. The red/green row tint already distinguishes
  which side a row came from, so paired delete+insert blocks can
  legitimately show the same number on two adjacent rows — that
  is intentional (each row is naming its own source position).
  The ShowLineNumbers toggle still works; side-by-side mode is
  untouched because its editors hold the raw file text and
  AvalonEdit's built-in margin is already correct there.
• Faint horizontal stripes between adjacent same-coloured diff
  rows are gone. The background renderers
  (DiffBackgroundRenderer and InlineDiffBackgroundRenderer)
  used to emit one rectangle per visual line — so a block of, say,
  five added lines was drawn as five separately-antialiased
  rectangles stacked vertically. Each rectangle contributed a
  sub-pixel antialiased edge at top and bottom against the
  transparent editor background, and where two rectangles met those
  paired AA stripes added up to a visible seam between the rows. A
  new LineBackgroundRectCoalescer merges
  vertically-adjacent same-brush rectangles into one taller rect
  before they reach DrawingContext.DrawRectangle, so a block
  of N same-coloured rows now draws as a single rectangle with AA
  only at the outside edges. Different-brush rows, gaps, and
  overlapping rects are left untouched.
• Inline mode now shows intra-line red/green spans on paired
  delete/insert lines instead of swallowing them under a strong
  full-row tint. When intra-line diff was enabled and a
  delete+insert pair produced inner spans, the inline view kept the
  per-line kind as Deleted/Inserted. Combined with the
  "strong-when-no-spans" row rule, that painted the entire row in
  the strong red/green tint and drew the matching strong-tint
  spans on top — making the spans invisible against the same color.
  The inline builder now reuses the highlight map's verdict
  verbatim, so paired lines with spans render as yellow Modified
  rows with the strong red/green spans showing through, exactly
  like side-by-side mode. The same fix also handles the asymmetric
  case where the map paired a line but produced no spans on this
  side (e.g. a pure-insertion intra-line change): the row now stays
  yellow Modified instead of falling back to a misleading strong
  red/green tint.
• Inline mode + Both view now hides the redundant all-yellow
  half of an asymmetric paired change. With intra-line diff on,
  it is common for a delete/insert pair to produce real spans on
  only one side (e.g. Dictionary<int,int> map = new() →
  var map = new Dictionary<int,int>() shows the insertion-side
  change but has nothing to highlight on the deletion side). The
  inline + Both view used to emit both rows — the partner with the
  spans, and a fully-yellow row right next to it that said
  "something changed here" without naming what. Those all-yellow
  rows are now suppressed when their partner carries the actual
  spans, since the partner already conveys the change. Single-side
  views (Left only, Right only) are untouched — the yellow row is
  preserved there because no partner is on screen to carry the
  signal. Symmetric no-spans pairs (e.g. whitespace-only diffs
  with Ignore Whitespace on) are also untouched, since the yellow
  is the only signal that a change exists at all.
• Paired delete+insert lines no longer render as yellow "Modified"
  when intra-line diff is off. The side-by-side renderer used to
  treat any positionally-paired delete/insert as Modified (yellow
  tint) regardless of the intra-line toggle. With intra-line off, that
  yellow had no inner red/green spans to back it up — the user got a
  "changed" signal with no indication of where the change was, which
  is the opposite of what yellow is supposed to mean. Yellow is now
  emitted only when intra-line is enabled and the pair clears the
  viability policy (so the user can actually see the changed tokens
  inside the line); otherwise both sides render as plain
  Deleted/Inserted (red/green).
• UTF-16 / UTF-32 source files no longer show "Binary file - diff
  not displayed." The binary-detection heuristic — git's "any NUL
  byte in the first 8 KiB" rule — used to fire on UTF-16-encoded text
  files because every ASCII character is paired with a NUL high byte.
  The detector now exempts buffers that start with a recognised text
  BOM (UTF-8, UTF-16 LE/BE, UTF-32 LE/BE), and the same exemption is
  applied to LibGit2Sharp's blob-side IsBinary check so committed
  UTF-16 blobs decode correctly too. The downstream encoding
  detector already handled all five BOM forms; only the binary
  short-circuit needed teaching.

Added

• SVG diff rendering (text + rasterized image). .svg files now
  decode through a new SharpVectors-backed image decoder and render in
  the existing image-diff pane alongside PNG / JPEG / GIF / BMP / ICO,
  using the same Side-by-side / Swipe / Onion-skin modes. A new
  Rendered toolbar toggle (visible only on .svg files where at
  least one side rasterised successfully) flips between the rendered
  bitmap view and the underlying XML text diff; the preference is
  persisted per AppSettings.RenderSvgImage. SVGs that fail to parse
  fall back to the XML text view rather than the binary-blob
  placeholder, and the Rendered toggle auto-hides so users aren't
  offered a button that does nothing. Rasterisation runs at up to a
  1024 px max-dimension (aspect preserved), letting WPF down-sample
  for fit-to-frame without re-rasterising on resize. Resolves #15.

v1.3.0

Added

• Stash support in the ref-picker popup. The "Pick…" popup next
  to every commit-ish input now includes a Stashes section showing
  all stash entries (symbolic name, subject, short SHA) ordered
  most-recent-first. Picking a stash writes stash@{N} into the
  commit-ish textbox. Filter matches against the symbolic name,
  subject text, and short SHA.
• "View stash" mode in the New Diff dialog. A dedicated mode
  that shows an inline stash list and launches a comparison of the
  stash's working-tree snapshot against HEAD at stash time
  (stash@{N}^1 → stash@{N}), matching git stash show
  semantics. Empty repos or repos with no stashes show a clear
  empty-state message.
• New Diff dialog auto-detects a GitHub PR URL on the clipboard.
  Opening New diff while a GitHub PR URL is on the clipboard now
  switches the dialog to GitHub pull request mode and pre-fills the
  URL field — so the common "I just copied a PR link from Outlook /
  chat / GitHub" path collapses to one click on OK. URLs with
  trailing /files, /commits/<sha>, query strings, or fragments
  are tolerated (same parser as the CLI). The detection is
  per-open: your session's last-used mode is not overwritten, so
  re-opening the dialog without a PR URL on the clipboard reverts
  to whatever mode you were actually working in. Junk on the
  clipboard, a clipboard owned by another app, or a clipboard
  containing a non-PR URL are all silently ignored.
• New Diff dialog: Branch vs merge-base auto-seeds the partner
  field with origin/<default-branch>. When the form's repo
  path resolves and the partner field is empty, the dialog now
  reads refs/remotes/origin/HEAD and pre-fills the partner with
  the friendly remote-tracking name (e.g. origin/main or
  origin/master). Cuts the dominant PR-review interaction to
  "type a branch name and hit OK". Clones without an
  origin/HEAD symref (some clones never set one), repos without
  an origin remote, and invalid repo paths leave the field
  empty — no surprise.
• New Diff dialog: cold-launch seeds the repo path from your
  most-recent diff. When you open New diff without an active
  context (e.g. straight from the recent-contexts list with no
  context currently open), every local-provider form now starts
  with the repo field pre-filled from the top of the recent-launch
  MRU. Empty MRU + no active context leaves the field blank.

Fixed

• Annotated tags now resolve everywhere a commit-ish is accepted.
  Picking an annotated tag (e.g. v0.2.0 created with git tag -a)
  in the New Diff dialog used to fail with "Cannot resolve
  v0.2.0" — first at validation, and after that was fixed, again
  at diff enumeration. Root cause was the same in both places:
  LibGit2Sharp's generic Lookup<Commit> returns null for an
  annotated tag because the tag's ref points at a TagAnnotation
  wrapper, not the commit itself, so callers that didn't peel
  through the wrapper saw the tag as unknown. The ref-picker,
  validator, and diff-engine internals now share a single
  CommitIshResolver.PeelToCommit helper that handles both
  lightweight and annotated tags. The same code path serves the
  CLI, so passing an annotated tag like DiffViewer.exe <repo> v0.2.0 origin/master also works.
• New Diff dialog: Pick… ref-picker buttons now actually open.
  The buttons next to the commit-ish fields in the Working tree vs
  commit, Commit vs commit, and Branch vs merge-base forms were
  stuck disabled until you also typed a commit-ish — defeating the
  point of the picker. They now enable as soon as the repo path
  resolves, including when the dialog opens with a prefilled repo
  path from the active context. Under the hood, the form view-models
  no longer canonicalise the repo path as a side effect of
  ComputeValidationError (which short-circuited on empty
  commit-ish fields), so the picker's CanonicalRepoPath is in sync
  with the user's repo-path input on every keystroke. No behaviour
  change to the OK button or the deferred error-message UX:
  validation errors still suppress until every required field is
  populated.

v1.2.0

Added

• Command-line flags for direct launch: DiffViewer.exe --repo <path> --left <commit-ish | WORKING> --right <commit-ish | WORKING> [--file <repo-relative-path>] launches straight into a diff context,
  bypassing the launch-context picker. WORKING is the sentinel for
  "working tree" (matches DiffSide.WorkingTree). --file pre-selects
  a file in the file list, with case-insensitive matching and both
  forward- and backward-slash separators accepted. Errors (missing or
  unknown flag, missing flag value, unresolvable ref, repo not found)
  print to stderr and exit with status 1; when DiffViewer is launched
  from a terminal those messages appear inline in that terminal, when
  launched from Explorer they fall back to the existing error dialog.
  The existing positional grammar (DiffViewer.exe <path>,
  DiffViewer.exe <pr-url>, ...) is unchanged. See the new
  "Command-line launch" section in the README for the git alias
  recipe.
• Hunk overview bar is now interactive for scrolling. Drag the
  viewport indicator (the soft blue outline that shows the editors'
  currently-visible window) up or down to scroll both editors —
  sticky-thumb behaviour, so whichever part of the indicator you
  grab stays under the cursor for the whole drag. Drag scrolling is
  pixel-precise (each pixel of mouse movement produces a sub-line
  of editor scroll) so fine adjustments work even when one bar pixel
  spans many file lines. The scroll wheel also works anywhere over
  the bar and moves the editors at the same rate as wheeling the
  editor surface itself (one notch =
  SystemParameters.WheelScrollLines lines). Neither interaction
  moves the caret or selects a hunk — they're pure scroll, leaving
  the editor caret and the active-hunk highlight unchanged. Clicking
  a hunk marker still jumps to that hunk; that behaviour is
  unchanged. Click-to-jump commits on mouse-up (not mouse-down) so
  that a press landing on a hunk marker which overlaps the viewport
  band can still promote to a drag if the user moves the mouse past
  the system drag threshold — previously, the jump fired immediately
  and stole the drag. The viewport indicator paints at the cursor's
  position on every mouse-move frame instead of waiting for the
  editor's scroll + layout pass to round-trip — keeps the indicator
  truly stuck to the cursor even on large files where the editor
  scroll can't quite keep up at fast drag speeds. Clicking empty
  bar space (anywhere that isn't a hunk marker or the viewport
  indicator) recenters the indicator on the cursor and starts a
  drag in the same gesture — minimap-style "click anywhere to jump
  there", and a press-and-drag from empty space scrubs without
  needing a second click. The indicator lands at the editor's
  natural settle position for the click — in side-by-side mode that
  always equals the cursor position, in inline mode it can be
  slightly offset because the inline document interleaves
  deletion lines (which advance the editor's scroll but not the
  right-side line count); picking the post-settle position up
  front keeps the indicator stable across MouseUp instead of
  visibly jumping when the editor's viewport catches up.
• Language-aware syntax highlighting for TypeScript (.ts, .tsx),
  YAML (.yaml, .yml), Go (.go), Rust (.rs), Ruby (.rb),
  Bash / shell (.sh, .bash, .zsh), and TOML (.toml). Combined
  with AvalonEdit's bundled definitions (C#, JavaScript, JSON, XML,
  HTML, CSS, Python, PowerShell, T-SQL, Java, C/C++, PHP, VB, etc.)
  this covers the most common file types in modern repositories.
  Highlighting is regex-based and intentionally conservative — diff
  background and intra-line word coloring still take precedence over
  language coloring, so changed-line signal isn't masked. Some
  pathological constructs may mis-color (notably TypeScript JSX
  attributes and Ruby heredocs); patch reports welcome.
• Image diff for binary image blobs. PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, and ICO
  files now render as an actual image-diff view instead of the
  generic "Binary file - diff not displayed." placeholder. Three
  viewing modes are exposed via toolbar radio buttons that replace
  the text-only toggles when an image is shown: Side-by-side
  (two fit-to-frame panes on a checkerboard background), Swipe
  (overlay both images with a draggable divider — drag anywhere
  over the canvas), and Onion-skin (stack both images with an
  opacity slider to blend between them). For added/deleted files
  the single available image fills the full canvas and the mode
  controls are hidden, since the three modes have no meaningful
  semantics when one side is absent. ICO files render the largest
  embedded resolution (a 256x256 frame is preferred over the 16x16
  frame when both are present). A header strip shows each side's
  dimensions, byte size, and the byte delta (e.g.
  512 x 512 / 18.3 KB -> 1024 x 1024 / 64.1 KB (+45.8 KB)),
  with an (animated, first frame) suffix when either side is a
  multi-frame GIF. The size gate reuses the existing
  LargeFileThresholdBytes setting; over-threshold images still
  fall back to the binary placeholder. Format and mode state is
  per-file in memory, not persisted in AppSettings. SVG support
  is tracked separately as issue #15.

v1.1.1

Changed

• CI/release pipeline now runs on Node.js 24-compatible GitHub
  Actions (actions/checkout@v6, actions/setup-dotnet@v5,
  softprops/action-gh-release@v3), ahead of the June 2 / Sep 16
  2026 Node.js 20 deprecation deadlines. No user-visible behavior
  change; the shipped DiffViewer.exe is functionally identical to
  v1.1.0.

v1.1.0

Added

• Loading overlay during context switches. Opening a GitHub PR, a
  different repo, or any other context now shows a window-level
  overlay with an indeterminate progress bar and phased status text
  ("Loading PR #N from owner/repo…" → "Fetching PR metadata…" →
  "Fetching head and merge base…" → "Loading repository…") so the
  10-second-ish gap between dismissing the New Diff dialog and the
  diff appearing is no longer silent. The overlay tracks the same
  switching state that already gated the recents dropdown, so it
  also covers recents-based switches and the missing-clone-then-
  resolve flow.

Fixed

• F8 / F7 (next / previous change) now navigate relative to where the
  caret actually is, not relative to the last hunk visited via
  keyboard navigation. Previously, after the auto-jump to the first
  hunk on file open, clicking the mouse into a context region between
  later hunks did not update navigation state — so pressing F8 from
  the user's new caret position could step backwards to a hunk
  before the caret. F8 now finds the first change after the caret;
  F7 finds the last change before the caret. The overview-bar
  "currently-selected hunk" highlight is unchanged.
• PR fetches no longer fail with a spurious 403 ("GitHub refused the
  request… your token lacks repo scope, or your org requires SSO
  authorization"). DiffViewer now sends the User-Agent header that
  GitHub's REST API requires; without it, every request was rejected
  regardless of token validity or repo visibility. The 403 error path
  also now includes GitHub's own response-body message, so the next
  legitimate 403 (real SSO requirement, IP allowlist, secondary rate
  limit, etc.) self-diagnoses instead of always blaming token scope.
• GitHub PR launches now find the local clone for a repo you already
  have open in DiffViewer, even when its parent directory isn't in
  the Repo roots setting. Previously, switching to a PR for the
  currently-displayed repo could fail with "DiffViewer still can't
  find a local clone of owner/repo" because the locator only
  consulted explicit mappings and configured repo roots. It now
  also probes the recent-contexts MRU list, so the active diff's
  clone (and any clone you've recently opened) is matchable
  without configuration.

v1.0.0

DiffViewer 1.0 marks the stable cut of the side-by-side Git diff
viewer for Windows. No functional changes since 0.6.0; this release
is the promotion-to-1.0 milestone. From this release onward, breaking
changes to the user-facing surface require a major version bump
(standard SemVer post-1.0).

What DiffViewer is

A side-by-side / inline Git diff viewer for Windows. Single-file
unsigned DiffViewer.exe for Windows 10+ (x64); no .NET install
needed. Compares two DiffSide values — CommitIsh or WorkingTree
— so the supported pairings are working tree vs HEAD, working tree
vs a commit, or commit vs commit. Two derived launch modes layer on
top: Branch vs merge-base for "what did this branch add", and
GitHub PR URL for one-shot pull-request review. LibGit2Sharp
powers in-process Git access — no git.exe shell-out and no auth
plumbing of its own.

Highlights since 0.1.0

Rolling up the 0.x line (0.1.0 → 0.6.0, 2026-05-14 → 2026-05-18):

• Launch contexts. Working-tree-vs-HEAD, working-tree-vs-commit,
  commit-vs-commit, Branch-vs-merge-base, GitHub PR URL. Ref picker
  popup with local + remote-tracking branches, tags, recent refs, and
  an inline merge-base composer. + New Diff button on the recents bar.
• File list. Three display modes (full / repo-relative / grouped);
  per-file Viewed checkbox with auto-clear-on-content-change;
  case-insensitive substring filter (Ctrl+/); Hide-viewed toggle;
  per-file stage / unstage / revert from the right-click menu; unified
  expand/collapse chrome across modes.
• Diff pane. Line-numbers, side-visibility (left / right / both),
  and word-wrap toolbar toggles; per-hunk stage / unstage / revert
  with preview; hunk overview bar; find-in-diff (Ctrl+F) with
  case / whole-words / regex.
• Navigation. F1 cheat sheet (drift-tested against the actual
  bindings); F7/F8 hunk navigation; F3 / Shift+F3 next / prev match;
  cross-section file-list selection; current-hunk position preserved
  across refreshes; same-file refreshes skip the re-read cycle.
• Commit metadata. Per-side header row in the file-list column
  with short SHA / author / relative date / subject; click for a
  modal with full message / absolute date / Copy SHA. Friendly ref
  name badge (master / v0.4.0) when a ref points exactly at the
  commit, ordered by git log --decorate semantics.
• PR-review feature. Pass a github.com PR URL on the command
  line to resolve the PR's (merge-base, head) and launch a normal
  two-commit diff. Auto-detects the local clone (configurable repo
  roots in Settings); prompts to clone if missing. Auth via
  gh auth token. Read-only and github.com-only.
• Persistence. Window size / position / maximized state, splitter
  position, every toolbar toggle, repo roots, remembered clones, and
  recent launch contexts all survive restarts. Drag-release writes
  geometry immediately, so a crash mid-session doesn't lose the most
  recent drag.

Install

Same story as the 0.x line: single-file unsigned DiffViewer.exe
for Windows 10+ (x64). SmartScreen may warn on first launch —
click "More info" → "Run anyway". The exe extracts bundled
native libraries to %TEMP% on first run.

v0.6.0

Added

• New Diff dialog: ref picker for commit-ish inputs. The
  "Working tree vs commit" and "Commit vs commit" forms now have a
  Pick… button next to each commit-ish field that opens a popup
  listing the repo's local branches, remote-tracking branches, tags,
  and refs you've recently used in this repo. A live case-insensitive
  filter box narrows every group as you type; each row shows the
  ref's friendly name plus its tip's short SHA. The popup also
  includes an inline merge-base composer — fill two refs and click
  Compute & use to substitute the resulting SHA into the field —
  for ad-hoc "what did this branch add since it forked" comparisons
  without leaving the dialog. Freeform typing still works as a
  fallback. Enumeration happens off the UI thread so opening the
  picker on a large repo doesn't freeze the dialog. Resolves
  #4.
• New Diff dialog: "Branch vs merge-base" mode. A new top-level
  mode in the left rail wires the dominant PR-style review workflow
  ("what did this branch add since it forked from main") into a
  one-click form. Takes a branch and a merge-base partner, resolves
  their most recent common ancestor on submit, and launches a diff
  with the merge-base on the left and the branch tip on the right —
  so additions land in the right pane the same way every other form
  produces. Surfaces "No common ancestor" inline when the two refs
  have unrelated histories, rather than silently disabling OK.
  Both commit-ish inputs get the same ref picker described above.
• File-list filter + per-file viewed checkbox. A new bar above
  the display-mode toggle adds a case-insensitive substring filter
  (slash-insensitive: foo/bar.cs and foo\bar.cs both match) that
  narrows the file list live as you type. Each file row gets a
  GitHub-PR-review-style Viewed checkbox on the right; viewed
  rows dim. A toolbar Hide viewed toggle composes with the
  filter to suppress reviewed files. Viewed state is per-launch-
  context (in-memory only) and auto-clears when the file's content
  fingerprint (left/right blob SHA, file sizes, status) changes
  between refreshes, so reviewing a stale snapshot doesn't carry
  forward when the file is edited again. Sections and directory
  nodes auto-collapse when none of their descendants are visible.
  Section header chips switch from (N) to (visible / total)
  while the filter or Hide-viewed is active. Two new keyboard
  shortcuts: Ctrl+/ focuses the filter, and Space (while the
  file list is focused) toggles Viewed on the selected row.
  F7/F8 navigation now skips rows hidden by the filter or
  Hide-viewed in addition to whitespace-only ones. The chrome is
  custom-styled to fit the rest of the app: the viewed checkbox is
  invisible at rest and fades in on row hover or selection, uses
  the app's Fluent-blue accent, and sits flush against the row's
  right edge; the filter box gets an italic placeholder and a
  clear-X button; the Hide viewed toggle hides itself when
  nothing is marked viewed, and auto-deactivates when the last
  viewed file is unmarked. Selected rows switch text and checkbox
  chrome to white-on-blue so the active row stays legible even
  when its file is viewed-and-dimmed. Resolves
  #3.

v0.5.0

Added

• **Commit metadata in the file-list column.**Each side of a
  comparison that points at a commit now renders a compact header
  row at the top of the file-list column showing the side label,
  short SHA, author name, relative date, and truncated subject.
  Clicking anywhere on the row opens a modal with the full author
  (name plus email), the absolute date in the commit's own timezone,
  both short and full SHA with a Copy-SHA button, and the full
  commit message body in a scrollable region. Working-tree sides
  render no row. For commit-vs-commit comparisons, both sides get
  their own row. When a branch or tag points exactly at the commit,
  a side-tinted ref badge appears before the short SHA in both the
  header row and the dialog — so e.g. comparing against HEAD reads
  as master, and a tagged release reads as v0.4.0. Priority is
  HEAD's branch, then tags, then other local branches, then
  remote-tracking branches; ties within a tier are broken
  alphabetically. Matches git log --decorate semantics. Resolves
  #6.
• Word-wrap toolbar toggle. A new Wrap button next to the
  Line #s toggle wraps long lines at the editor's right edge in
  both side-by-side and inline modes. Useful for files with very long
  lines (minified JS, long Markdown paragraphs, generated configs,
  single-line JSON) where horizontal scrolling becomes the dominant
  reading cost. Toggle state persists across launches alongside the
  other diff-pane settings. Keybinding: Ctrl+Shift+L. In
  side-by-side mode each side wraps independently, so paired lines no
  longer align row-for-row when one side has more wrap points than
  the other — this is the cost of seeing the full content in-frame.
  Resolves #11.

Fixed

• Window size and position now persist immediately on drag-release.
  Previously, dragging the window to a new size or location was only
  persisted on the next Normal↔Maximized state change or on close, so
  a crash or hard kill mid-session lost the most recent drag. The
  window now writes the new geometry as soon as the user releases the
  mouse, matching how the file-list splitter has always behaved.
• Line-numbers toolbar toggle now persists across launches. The
  toolbar Line #s toggle previously updated the in-memory state
  and the editors but didn't write back to settings, so the choice
  was lost on restart. Caught while wiring up the new word-wrap
  toolbar toggle (issue #11); both toggles now use the same
  persistence path as every other toolbar toggle.