What does ‘compare the SHA-256’ actually mean?

It means compare two fingerprints. If the values match, the content you checked is the same content that produced the reference checksum.

The annoying bit

Someone said ‘compare the SHA-256.’ Cool. Where do you do that?

In plain English

A SHA-256 value is a fixed-length fingerprint produced from some input. Change even a tiny part of that input and the fingerprint changes. That makes checksums useful for verifying that content has not changed unexpectedly.

A hash is not encryption and cannot be reversed back into the original text.
The same input should produce the same SHA-256 value every time.
A mismatch means the two inputs are not identical.

Do the job

Enough explaining.

Generate a SHA checksum →