Shortcuts and settings
Every keyboard shortcut, setting and command-line option in DeltaView, with defaults.
Keyboard shortcuts
These are the defaults. Press Ctrl + / in the app to see the list with your own keys. To change one, open Settings, go to Keyboard, select the shortcut and press the keys you want. Reset all restores the defaults. If two actions share a key, the row warns you.
Tabs and app
| Action | Keys |
|---|---|
| New comparison tab | Ctrl + T |
| Close tab | Ctrl + W |
| Next tab | Ctrl + Tab |
| Previous tab | Ctrl + Shift + Tab |
| Go to tab 1 to 9 | Ctrl + 1 … 9 (fixed) |
| Settings | Ctrl + , |
| Keyboard shortcuts | Ctrl + / |
| Compare text from clipboard | Ctrl + Shift + V |
| Quit DeltaView | Ctrl + Q |
Navigation
| Action | Keys |
|---|---|
| Next change | Alt + ↓ |
| Previous change | Alt + ↑ |
| Find | Ctrl + F |
| Find next | F3 |
| Find previous | Shift + F3 |
| Go to line | Ctrl + G |
Editing and merging
| Action | Keys |
|---|---|
| Save | Ctrl + S |
| Switch between view and edit | Ctrl + E |
| Copy change to the right | Alt + → |
| Copy change to the left | Alt + ← |
| Undo | Ctrl + Z |
| Redo | Ctrl + Shift + Z |
In a three-way merge, Alt + → takes the left version and Alt + ← takes the right version. Adding Shift appends that side below what the region already holds.
View
| Action | Keys |
|---|---|
| Bigger text | Ctrl + + |
| Smaller text | Ctrl + − |
| Reset text size | Ctrl + 0 |
| Wrap long lines | Alt + W |
| Hide unchanged lines | Alt + U |
| Compare again | F5 |
Folder tree
| Action | Keys |
|---|---|
| Open the selected entry | Enter |
| Expand all folders | Ctrl + Shift + + |
| Collapse all folders | Ctrl + Shift + − |
| Synchronize folders | Ctrl + Shift + Y |
Settings
Open Settings from the tab bar or with Ctrl + ,. Changes apply straight away and are saved.
Appearance
| Setting | Options | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Theme | System, Light, Dark | System |
| Accent colour | Eleven presets, or a hex value (RRGGBB) | Indigo |
| Diff colours | Classic, Colour-blind safe, High contrast | Classic |
| Density | Comfortable, Compact | Comfortable |
Classic uses green, red and amber. Colour-blind safe uses blue, orange and purple, readable with red–green colour blindness. High contrast uses stronger fills for bright rooms and low-contrast screens.
Editor
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Font | Any monospace font installed on your computer; Custom… takes a font family name | System monospace |
| Font size | 8 to 32 px | 13 px |
| Line height | 1.0 to 2.5 | 1.45 |
| Tab width | Spaces a tab character takes up, 1 to 16 | 4 |
| Show whitespace | Marks spaces and tabs with faint symbols | Off |
| Wrap long lines | Wraps instead of scrolling sideways | Off |
| Syntax highlighting | Colours code by language | On |
| Fold unchanged lines | Collapses long runs of identical lines | Off |
| Context lines | Unchanged lines kept around each change when folding, 0 to 50 | 3 |
Comparison rules
Applied to new comparisons. A file view can override them for itself from its compare rules menu.
| Setting | Options | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Whitespace | Every character matters, Ignore trailing whitespace, Ignore changes in amount, Ignore all whitespace | Every character matters |
| Ignore case | On, Off | Off |
| Ignore line endings | On, Off | On |
| Ignore blank lines | On, Off | Off |
Folders
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Ignored names | Files and folders left out of folder comparisons. * and ? are wildcards. | .git, .hg, .svn, node_modules, .dart_tool, __pycache__, *.pyc, .DS_Store, Thumbs.db |
| Respect .gitignore | Skips whatever each folder's .gitignore excludes | On |
| Compare files by | Content (exact), or Size and date (fast) | Content (exact) |
| Default filter | Everything, Changes only, Only on the left, Only on the right | Changes only |
| Dates | 21 Oct 2026 14:05, 2026-10-21 14:05, or relative such as 3 hours ago | 21 Oct 2026 14:05 |
Behaviour
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Restore the last session | Reopens the comparisons that were open when DeltaView was closed | On |
| External editor | Command used by Open in external editor. {file} is replaced with the path; without it, the path is added at the end. | Empty (the system default application) |
An example for External editor: code --goto {file}.
Command-line options
delta-view open the home screen
delta-view LEFT RIGHT compare two folders or two files
delta-view --merge LOCAL BASE REMOTE [--output MERGED]| Option | Meaning |
|---|---|
-m, --merge | Treat the three paths as LOCAL BASE REMOTE. |
-o FILE, --output FILE, --output=FILE | Where the merged result is written. Only with --merge. |
-h, --help | Print the usage and exit. |
-V, --version | Print DeltaView and the version, and exit. |
-- | Everything after it is a path, even if it starts with -. |
--help and --version exit without opening a window. Everything else exits with status 0 when the window closes. Comparisons opened from the command line replace the restored session for that run.
Supported formats
| Kind | Formats |
|---|---|
| Text encodings | UTF-8, UTF-8 with BOM, UTF-16 LE, UTF-16 BE, Latin-1 |
| Line endings | LF, CRLF; mixed endings are kept as read |
| Images | PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, BMP |
| Structured data | JSON, YAML (.yaml, .yml), CSV, TSV |
| Archives | zip, tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar.xz (read-only) |
| Remote | SFTP, with password or private key |
| Reports | HTML, CSV |
| Patches | Unified diff (.patch) |
Size limits: a text diff handles files up to 8 MB each, and a three-way merge up to 32 MB each.
Where DeltaView keeps its data
Settings, recent comparisons, open tabs, saved SFTP connections and trusted host keys are stored on your computer only.
| Install | Settings, connections, host keys | Temporary files |
|---|---|---|
Linux (.deb, PPA) | ~/.local/share/com.dhivalabs.delta_view | ~/.cache/deltaview |
| Windows (installer) | %APPDATA%\com.dhivalabs\DeltaView | %LOCALAPPDATA%\DeltaView\Cache |
The snap keeps its settings inside its own folder, at ~/snap/delta-view/current/.local/share/com.dhivalabs.delta_view.
Deleting these folders removes everything DeltaView remembers. You can also clear recent comparisons with Clear all on the home screen, and forget saved connections and host keys in the SFTP connect dialog.