wxHexEditor 0.24

Overview

If you’re looking for a dedicated hex editor that is not a pain in the back and will provide you with plenty of tools for examining big files, as well as editing disks and physical memory, then look no more- wxHexEditor is here for you. It was developed with C++ and wxWidgets, and has plenty of features that will give you the ability to work with hex data from a comfortable GUI.

Installation

This program has the huge advantage of being portable. This means that all you have to do is just extract it from its archive once you download it and launch the executable in it (wxHexEditor.exe). The other files that are included within the archive are the GNU General Public License, a changelog for the program, and a folder that contains files used when changing the program’s language.

wxHexEditor by no means has any kind of malicious items in it (viruses, Trojans, etc.), and doesn’t distribute any additional 3^rd-party advertised software either.

Supported operating systems are Windows (all versions, 32/64-bit), Linux and Mac OS X.

Interface

The program’s interface is slick, and has a silver-ish look that resembles a Mac GUI a bit. At the top is the menu bar with 7 items (File, Edit, View, Tools, Devices, Options and Help), and below it is the toolbar with several buttons for quick access to commonly used functions (New file, Open, Save, Save as, Close, Find, Go to offset, etc.).

The main area of the window is split into 2 panes. The left one is divided into two sub-panels, with the top one being a Data Interpreter, and the bottom one being the information panel for displaying general information about the open file/device/memory. The pane on the right, now, is the main pane, and all data is presented in it.

Pros

The most important feature here is that wxHexEditor practically has no limits on the sizes of the items it can open. And I’m saying practically because it does have a limit of 2⁶⁴ bytes, which translates into 16 billion gigabytes (or some exabytes, if you wish)- a limit that can only be theoretically reached. And the best part is that it doesn’t even open the whole file or device into the memory for reading; instead it splits it into several parts and reads each one temporarily. This helps reduce dramatically the cost of memory when working with big files.

Once you open a file or a device, you can view its data in hex format in the main pane. Then, you can search for text or hex values, as well as create TAGS (i.e. save selections) with different colors.

The data interpreter on the left converts automatically selected values between several different data types (8/16/32/64 bit integer signed/unsigned, float, double and binary).

Other features in the program include a function that compares two files, a checksum calculator, as well as backup and secure wipe functions.

Cons

No cons here.

Alternatives

Some alternatives for wxHexEditor are WinHex (paid), HxD (free), UltraEdit (paid), PE Explorer (paid), 010 Editor (paid), Hex Workshop (paid) and Hexplorer (free). Out of these, the best ones are WinHex, HxD and Hexplorer.

Conclusion

wxHexEditor is one of the best tools that you can use in order to analyze files and disks, regardless of their size. It’s also lightweight, easy to use and free, so don’t hesitate to give it a try.