Compare Tabs

Adds file comparison to the editor tab context menu, plus a Paste Compare panel for quickly diffing two pasted texts — no commands to type.

Features

1. Compare via tab context menu

• Right-click any editor tab → Select for Compare
• Right-click another tab → Compare with Selected to open the diff view
• Right-click any editor tab → Compare with Clipboard to diff that file against the clipboard

("Compare with Selected" only appears after a tab has been selected, matching the built-in Explorer behavior.)

2. Paste Compare

Click the ⇆ Paste Compare item in the status bar (bottom right) — an empty editable diff opens immediately. Paste one text into the left side, the other into the right side; differences highlight live as you paste or type.

The diff is backed by an in-memory file system (paste-compare: scheme): edits auto-save back to memory — no save prompts, no temp files on disk, no stray Untitled tabs. The language (JSON, YAML, XML/HTML, SQL, Python, shell, Markdown, JavaScript) is auto-detected as you paste and applied to both sides for syntax highlighting.

Development / Debugging

No dependencies to install. Open this folder in VS Code and press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host.

Packaging & Installing

npx @vscode/vsce package   # produces a .vsix
code --install-extension compare-tabs-0.0.1.vsix

Related built-in features (no extension needed)

• Compare Active File with Clipboard — current file vs clipboard
• Compare New Untitled Text Files — two blank editors to paste into manually