What Is Meld? A Visual Diff and Merge Tool Explained

Updated

Meld is a visual diff and merge tool that helps you compare files, directories, and version-controlled projects. It provides two-way and three-way comparison for both files and directories, and integrates with popular version control systems. If you need to review code changes, understand patches, or work through a merge conflict, Meld is designed for exactly that.

What Meld Does

Meld's core purpose is making differences visible and manageable. Instead of reading raw diff output, you see changes side by side and can act on them directly.

File comparison

  • Compare, edit, and merge files with live comparison updates
  • Navigate between changes and operate on change blocks
  • Apply simple text filtering to ignore irrelevant differences
  • Get three-way merge assistance with conflict handling and base version display

Folder comparison

  • Identify and manage missing or modified files across folders
  • Drill down into a file comparison for a detailed view of differences
  • Ignore certain files or folders to keep comparisons useful

Version control

  • Supports Git, Mercurial, Bazaar, and Subversion
  • Check your changes, commit, and push easily
  • View and manage version control states
  • Tool integration with e.g. git mergetool

Who It's For

Meld suits developers and anyone working with text-based files who needs to see what changed and why. Typical situations include:

  • Reviewing a patch or pull request before merging
  • Resolving a merge conflict with three-way comparison
  • Comparing two versions of a config file or document
  • Checking which files differ between two directories

Platform Support and Installation

Meld is packaged for most Linux/Unix distributions and is also available on Flathub. Windows users should download the installer. Meld does not yet support automatic updates or portable installs.

Meld is not yet officially supported on macOS, though semi-official builds are available and may be fully integrated in the future. You can install via Homebrew, MacPorts, or Fink. Older third-party binaries exist but may have issues with recent macOS versions.

Requirements

  • Python 3.6
  • GTK+ 3.22
  • GLib 2.36
  • PyGObject 3.36
  • GtkSourceView 4.0
  • pycairo

See the current README file for development and build requirements.

Current Release

Meld 3.24.0 is the stable release dated 20 June 2026. The most recent stable release is the best option for most users, as changes to these releases are kept to a minimum. Source (.tar.xz) and Windows/macOS binaries are available, along with a full release list for previous versions.

Running From Source

You can run Meld directly from a git clone without installing:

$ git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/meld.git
$ bin/meld

Getting Involved

All development happens on GNOME's GitLab instance. Open an issue for any problems you encounter, and ask on the discussion board if you're uncertain about anything.