RustDiff is a desktop application that compares two JSON, XML or SQL documents by their structure — keys, array indices, XML nodes and attributes, SQL statements — instead of by raw text lines, and highlights the differences in a clear, visual way. The diff engine is written in Rust; the interface is a Tauri app with a web-based UI.
Main features:
- Semantic diff for JSON (key by key), XML (nodes, attributes and text) and SQL (statement by statement), with a line-by-line fallback for plain text.
- Split editor with syntax highlighting, automatic pretty-print and in-editor search.
- Inline and full-line highlighting for added, removed and changed items.
- Filterable table of differences, clickable to jump to the exact location.
- Graph view of JSON and XML documents with pan, zoom and node search.
- Light and dark themes that follow the system, and adjustable text size.
- Export to plain text or styled HTML.
- Session history backed by SQLite, searchable, with per-entry and bulk deletion.
Screenshots
Observed history
| App | Change | Version | When ↓ |
|---|---|---|---|
| updated | 0.4.0 → 1.0.1 | 16 Oct 2026 |
Upstream releases
Release notes supplied by the developer. These dates are not Flathub package publication times.
1.0.116 Oct 2026
Packaging fix: the application icon now ships as a PNG set alongside the SVG, because the Flatpak builder runtime decodes icons through a pipeline that cannot read the SVG.
1.0.014 Oct 2026
The first stable release: a full rewrite of the interface on a modern stack. The diff engine, the parsers, the history database and the settings file are the same code as in 0.4.0, so upgrading needs no migration and your history and preferences carry over.
- A Tauri v2 shell in Rust with a React 19 and TypeScript interface, styled with Tailwind CSS v4 and shadcn/ui components on Radix, and the self-hosted Geist and Geist Mono fonts.
- CodeMirror 6 editors with syntax highlighting, line and character-level diff highlighting, pretty-print and search.
- A design system built on OKLCH tokens, with light and dark themes (dark by default, or follow the system) and WCAG AA contrast checked by tests.
- The graph view is drawn on a 2D canvas over a layout computed in Rust, with pan, zoom, zoom-to-fit, node search and node inspection.
- The language switches between English and Spanish on the spot, without a restart.
- Typed communication between the interface and the Rust core: the interface never touches the filesystem.
- History, filters, export to .txt and .html, keyboard shortcuts and the text size setting work as before.
- Fixed a crash at launch on NVIDIA graphics under Wayland.
- Removed the "Open History" desktop action, which never worked.
- RustDiff is no longer published on crates.io, and the Homebrew source formula is retired in favour of the prebuilt rustdiff-app cask.
0.4.027 Jul 2026
A tidier header bar and a collapsible differences panel.
- The differences panel can now be hidden and brought back with a header bar button or Ctrl+D, giving the editors the full window height. Opening the graph view hides it automatically and closing the graph restores it.
- Secondary header bar actions (differences, graph, history, format) are now icon buttons with tooltips and accessible labels, so the header stays compact on narrow windows.
- Fixed symbolic icons that rendered as outlines invisible on dark themes: the bundled fallbacks are now fill-based, which is what GTK recolors.
- Every icon the app uses now ships a bundled fallback, so no packaging channel can show a broken-image placeholder when the desktop icon theme lacks a name.
- The Debian/APT package now ships the bundled SQL language definition, restoring SQL syntax highlighting for .deb installs.
0.3.322 Jul 2026
Fixes broken icons in the graph view.
- The graph view toggle, its empty state and the "zoom to fit" button could show up as a generic broken-image icon on themes that don't ship network-workgroup-symbolic or zoom-fit-best-symbolic (notably the Homebrew Adwaita bundled into the macOS build). RustDiff now ships its own fallback icons for both names.
- Documented that the .deb/APT packages require Ubuntu 24.04+ or an equivalent recent Debian (libadwaita >= 1.5, GTK4 >= 4.12); older systems should use the Flatpak package instead.