meld allows you to start an empty comparison and to paste content into it without saving.
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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meld is pretty cool, yes.
I already use Meld, yet somehow it never occurred to me to press that button xD Thanks!
diff(1)
Edit: oh I'm not sure you can paste two things into the terminal like that. Maybe kdiff3. If I'm really lazy I use this online one: https://editor.mergely.com/
diff <<EOF
pastestuffhere
EOF
while this is running, paste the other stuff into terminal. I'm assuming diff reads stdin, if not given a filename.
vim's :diffthis
For CLI, diff has already been mentioned; for a GUI application I'd recommend meld:
You could always run NP++ via WINE if you can't find a native Linux solution that you like.
You're not wrong, but..... Yuck
I have no hangups about using Wine for games and Windows only special snowflake apps. But a text editor through wine on Linux just feels dirty xD
I didn't say it was ideal, but if nothing else has the feature you want, it would work!
It’s not a very Linux-y answer, but VSC does allow you to compare 2 pages for differences. Those pages can be unsaved or saved files.
Thanks, I'll add VSCode/ium to the arsenal. I tend underutilize VSCode since Kate usually does everything needed by a text editor without all the baggage.