Compare Two Files in Visual Studio

Inspired by Vladimir Reshetnikov's answer above, I found a very comfortable way how you can instantly compare two files with Visual Studio by using drag and drop or via the "Send To" context menu. It only requires a little preparation which you need to do once and then it is useful like a Swiss army knife.

Visual Studio already has everything you need, and there are only some configuration steps required to make this working:

File compare using drag & drop

Preparation:

1. Create a new batch file using your favorite text editor. Type the following:

   @echo off
   setlocal
   set vspath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE
   start "Compare files" /B /MIN "%vspath%\devenv.exe" /diff %2 %1 First:'%2' Second:'%1'
   

   You might notice that I have reversed the %1 and %2 parameters in the batch. This is because I noticed that the file explorer passes the second file as the first parameter, and then the first file as the second parameter.

2. Save this code as VS_FileCompare.cmd to use it, and modify vspath if required to match the location of devenv.exe (depending on the Visual Studio version you're currently using, see footnote^*) )

3. Either create a shortcut named "File Compare" for VS_FileCompare.cmd and place it on the desktop (as used in the animation below), so it is always available to drag & drop files onto it or directly place the batch file on the desktop. That's all!

Usage:

1. Open the Windows explorer via Win + E

2. Select two files to compare in the explorer

3. Drag and drop them as shown in the animation below:

4. After a few seconds (depending on the launch time of Visual Studio), the results will be shown in Visual Studio:

Note: It does not harm if Visual Studio is already open. In this case it will just open up a new window within the running instance of Visual Studio. So you can compare multiple file pairs, but please ensure you have selected only two files at a time.