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Poedit 3.6: Powerful new merging for JSON, XLIFF & more

Poedit 3.6 brings a game-changing feature to translators and developers: merging for non-PO files. If you’ve ever wished for the power of msgmerge but for formats like JSON or XLIFF, this release is for you. In addition, WordPress users get full support for .l10n.php and .json files, and Poedit now supports Apple’s XCLOC bundles.

Merging for non-PO file formats

msgmerge has long been used in gettext-based workflows to update PO translations based on new POT files. However, many projects rely on other formats for localization. Poedit 3.6 introduces merging support for JSON, XLIFF, bringing similar functionality to all formats editable in the app.

Screenshot of universal merging

How it works

When updating translations, Poedit intelligently aligns existing entries with the new source material. This means:

  1. Existing translations remain intact when the corresponding source string is unchanged.
  2. New source strings are added as untranslated entries.
  3. Strings that no longer exist in the source are removed.
  4. For strings with IDs, translations are preserved even if the source text has changed slightly.

This makes updating translations for non-PO formats as seamless as it has always been for gettext users. Whether you’re working with a JSON-based system or XLIFF files for software internationalization, or other structured translation files, you now have an easy way to keep them up to date, without having to manually pre-translate from scratch or copy-paste.

Improved WordPress files comppiler

Previously, Poedit could only handle WordPress .l10n.php and JSON files when connecting to a remote WordPress installation. In Poedit 3.6, we’ve introduced local compilation of these files. In fact, we’ve built a custom compiler for Poedit to ensure consistent behavior with gettext.

Performance and UI improvements

The progress UI has been enhanced with better status updates, including summaries for pre-translation, Excel operations, and other imports. The UI is much more responsible when running background tasks.

Excel import and export in particular are now significantly faster.

Other improvements

  • Apple XCLOC Support – Apple’s XCLOC format is used for Xcode localization projects, and Poedit now includes initial support for it.
  • Updated bundled GNU gettext to 0.23.1.
  • Added Serbian (Latin) and Uyghur translations.