diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 3717609143..b994e2a485 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -2,6 +2,9 @@
 
 ### Parsing
 
+File detection now supports Windows-1252 encoded test (an extension of
+ISO-8859-1), and is stricter about UTF-16 detection.
+
 Updated to the latest tree-sitter parser for Make and YAML.
 
 ## 0.62 (released 20th December 2024)
diff --git a/Cargo.lock b/Cargo.lock
index 46d0e1ffbb..69e34b9552 100644
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/Cargo.lock
@@ -247,6 +247,7 @@ dependencies = [
  "cc",
  "clap",
  "crossterm",
+ "encoding_rs",
  "glob",
  "hashbrown",
  "humansize",
@@ -317,6 +318,15 @@ version = "1.10.0"
 source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
 checksum = "11157ac094ffbdde99aa67b23417ebdd801842852b500e395a45a9c0aac03e4a"
 
+[[package]]
+name = "encoding_rs"
+version = "0.8.35"
+source = "registry+https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io-index"
+checksum = "75030f3c4f45dafd7586dd6780965a8c7e8e285a5ecb86713e63a79c5b2766f3"
+dependencies = [
+ "cfg-if",
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "env_logger"
 version = "0.10.2"
diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index e60411ef54..6955d84c0d 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -97,6 +97,7 @@ tree-sitter-lua = "0.2.0"
 tree-sitter-xml = "0.7.0"
 tree-sitter-make = "1.1.1"
 tree-sitter-yaml = "0.7.0"
+encoding_rs = "0.8.35"
 
 [dev-dependencies]
 # assert_cmd 2.0.10 requires predicates 3.
diff --git a/sample_files/compare.expected b/sample_files/compare.expected
index 74ceef1ed1..806ec45fcd 100644
--- a/sample_files/compare.expected
+++ b/sample_files/compare.expected
@@ -298,6 +298,9 @@ ca98b4d14fc21e0f04cf24aeb3d2526c  -
 sample_files/whitespace_1.tsx sample_files/whitespace_2.tsx
 ac8b1a89ac26333f2d4e9433b2ca3958  -
 
+sample_files/windows_1251_1.txt sample_files/windows_2251_1.txt
+d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e  -
+
 sample_files/xml_1.xml sample_files/xml_2.xml
 e629cbd2e721fd249c7ce1626f17e953  -
 
diff --git a/sample_files/windows_1251_1.txt b/sample_files/windows_1251_1.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..4e6ed73f45
--- /dev/null
+++ b/sample_files/windows_1251_1.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Muß können: löst muß daß Heißt löscht führen für muß ähnlich
diff --git a/sample_files/windows_1251_2.txt b/sample_files/windows_1251_2.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..41d35bd3d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/sample_files/windows_1251_2.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Muß können: löst muß daß Heißt löscht führen für muß ähmlich
diff --git a/src/files.rs b/src/files.rs
index b7702adec7..ec3ac6592b 100644
--- a/src/files.rs
+++ b/src/files.rs
@@ -215,7 +215,7 @@ pub(crate) fn guess_content(bytes: &[u8]) -> ProbableFileKind {
         .take(5000)
         .filter(|c| *c == std::char::REPLACEMENT_CHARACTER || *c == '\0')
         .count();
-    if num_utf16_invalid <= 5 {
+    if num_utf16_invalid <= 1 {
         info!(
             "Input file is mostly valid UTF-16 (invalid characters: {})",
             num_utf16_invalid
@@ -223,6 +223,13 @@ pub(crate) fn guess_content(bytes: &[u8]) -> ProbableFileKind {
         return ProbableFileKind::Text(utf16_string);
     }
 
+    // If the input bytes are valid Windows-1252 (an extension of
+    // ISO-8859-1 aka Latin 1), treat them as such.
+    let (latin1_str, _encoding, saw_malformed) = encoding_rs::WINDOWS_1252.decode(bytes);
+    if !saw_malformed {
+        return ProbableFileKind::Text(latin1_str.to_string());
+    }
+
     ProbableFileKind::Binary
 }