better-diff

A Rust TUI program for visualizing git diffs with novel visualization features.

Features

• Side-by-side diff view with file tabs
• Token-level change highlighting — word-level diffs within changed lines (not just line-level)
• Structural folding — AST-aware collapsing via tree-sitter
• Block move detection — detects moved code blocks with visual linking
• Heat map minimap — change density sidebar
• Change animations — subtle transitions on hunk focus
• Two modes — working tree vs HEAD, staged vs HEAD
• Filesystem watching — near-real-time updates via notify

Install

cargo install --path .

Usage

# View working tree changes
better-diff

# View staged changes
better-diff --staged

# View changes in a specific directory
better-diff /path/to/repo

Keybindings

Key	Action
j/k or arrows	Scroll line by line
n/N	Jump to next/previous hunk
Tab/Shift+Tab	Next/previous file
1-9	Jump to file by number
s / w	Staged / working tree mode
c	Cycle collapse level
q / Esc	Quit

Built With

• Ratatui — TUI framework
• git2 — Git operations
• similar — Word/char-level diffing
• tree-sitter — AST parsing & syntax highlighting
• notify — Filesystem watching