Bless vs Hex Fiend

Bless is a free binary editor for editing files as sequences of bytes. It supports multilevel undo and redo, customizable data views, multiple tabs, and fast find and replace. The project highlights efficient handling of large data files and raw disk editing, with search and save operations running in multiple threads. Bless exports to text and HTML, while plugins can add other export formats and extend the editor. It is written in C# with Gtk# bindings for GTK+ and distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. GNU/Linux is the main target; listed supported platforms are Linux and Windows, and the README says it should also run on *BSD, Solaris, and Win32. Building the current version requires GTK+, a Mono/.NET runtime and C# compiler, Gtk# bindings, pkg-config, and Meson. The GitHub releases page has no releases, and the README provides source-build instructions. NEWS lists version 0.6.3 dated 2020-10-11. Saving a changed-size file under the same name requires temporary space for both files; same-size files save in place.

Hex Fiend is a free, open-source hex editor for macOS that can insert, delete, rearrange, and overwrite binary data. It can search large files and compare them while accounting for insertions and deletions. The editor does not keep files in memory or require a full file to be loaded. Its smart saving avoids rewriting unchanged portions and does not require temporary disk space. The maker says it can handle files as large as users can create and reports testing files up to 118 GB. A data inspector interprets values as signed or unsigned integers and floating-point numbers in big- or little-endian formats. Scripted binary templates visualize file structure, and an embeddable framework provides hex and data views under a permissive BSD-style license. The official site lists version 2.18.1 and requires macOS 10.14.6 or later. The Mac App Store distribution collects no data and makes no network requests; the direct-download distribution checks for updates without collecting or storing user data. Hex Fiend is notarized for macOS 10.14 and later.