Editing an Open With Item

Enter a name in the Description edit to appear on the Open With menu. To define a keyboard shortcut for the application, focus on the Shortcut edit and press the desired keystroke. Click the Remove button to remove an assigned shortcut. Enter a suitable Command line specification for launching the application. It can include command line switches appropriate to that application. The following variables will be replaced with the indicated information:

%f | Absolute path and filename
%l | (lowercase L) Current line number in file view
%n | Filename only
%p | Absolute path
%x | Extension (includes ".")
%b | Filename without extension
%F | Path and filename relative to the working folder
%P | Path relative to the working folder

"1" and "2" can be appended to the end of variables to refer to the left/first or right/second file (e.g. "BCompare %F2 %F1"). In all cases except for a second %f or %l (for backwards compatibility), leaving a number off will refer to the first file no matter how many times it's listed on the command line.

The Working folder edit allows you to change where the program executes (the "Start in" folder). If it is blank, the program is executed in the same working folder as Beyond Compare. You can specify a specific folder, or pick the special values <parent folder> and <base folder> from the dropdown list. <parent folder> will use the selected file's parent folder, while <base folder> will use the base folder of the selected side (or the parent folder in a file view).

Use the Path delimiter edit to replace all path delimiters with the given string. If left blank, the normal delimiters will be used (e.g. backslash (\) under Windows).

The Accepts files and Accepts folders checkboxes control whether the application should be available for files, folders, or both. Tip: You can configure Beyond Compare itself as an additional application for folders. That way, you can select folders and compare them in another instance of Beyond Compare.

Refresh when finished performs a Fast Refresh when Beyond Compare is done processing the Open With list.

When the Multiple instances checkbox is marked, you can select multiple files or file pairs, and execute the operation on all of them once per file or pair of lined up files. With this option, Beyond Compare checks to see if a second file would be given on the command line (e.g. "%x2"). If it is, the application will execute on pairs at a time, otherwise it will break the pair up and execute once for each selected item in the pair.

Wait for previous instance to finish makes Beyond Compare wait until the previous command finishes executing before running the next command.