Git Branch Differ

Git Branch Differ is a Solution Explorer Filter which, when applied, only shows those files in your Solution Explorer that were Added/Modified/Renamed in your working branch as compared to a "reference" branch/commit/tag of your choice, typically a master/main branch.

After the filter is applied, you can open a diff for any file from Solution Explorer to view what changed.

Supports VS2019 and VS2022.

To download for VS2022, go to https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=SajalVerma.GitBranchDifferDev17

Usage

1. Click the Branch Diff Filter in the Solution Explorer Filters dropdown to only see files that were changed in the working branch.
   By default, the extension will use master/main or the first branch found in repo as the Git reference to compare with.

2. Once the filter is applied, right-click on a file in Solution Explorer, then click Open diff with Git reference.
   This opens a new tab, displaying the diff of the file's content in working branch vs. file's content in reference branch/commit/tag.

3. You can set your own Git reference from the Git reference configuration window.
   Click the button as shown in the screenshot below.

4. Type in the branch name/commit-SHA/tag name in the text box at the bottom, or select a reference from the list of branches/recent commits/tags, then press OK. Re-apply the Branch Diff Filter filter in Solution Explorer.

Motivation

The extension was created to make reviewing pull requests in .NET projects easier, as jumping/navigating via code (classes, methods, properties and their references inside the solution) is possible when the comparison view is "native" to Visual Studio, as opposed to only text-based code comparison on platforms like Github.

Note that GitBranchDiffer filter does not support displaying files that were deleted in the working branch.

Report Issue

To report a bug, please use the Issue Tracker