Bioactive hydrogels with rapid gelation, robust mechanical properties, and antibacterial functions are critical for infected wound management. In this study, three functional PEGylated dialdehydes were proposed, namely polyethylene glycol (PEG) containing a syringaldehyde (SY) skeleton, containing a gentisic acid (GA) skeleton, and a polyethylene glycol containing an imidazole quaternary salt (IM) skeleton, which were cross-linked with chitosan (CS) to form a Schiff base self-healing hydrogel, coded SY-PEG/CS, GA-PEG/CS, and IM-PEG/CS. The prepared binary hydrogels showed similarities in good biocompatibility, strong antimicrobial activity (> 95 %), hemostatic properties (< 100 s) and self-healing properties, while showing differences for specific therapeutic performances. The SY-PEG/CS hydrogel demonstrated the most rapid sol-gel transformation with a gelling time of 29.3 s and the strongest in vitro antioxidant capability with a DPPH radical scavenge percentage of 81.6 %, while the GA-PEG/CS hydrogel exhibited the largest swelling rate of 170.5 %, the highest tensile and compressive strengths of 80.3 kPa and 1595 kPa, and the best infected wound healing efficiency with 82.0 % within seven days, and the IM-PEG/CS hydrogels showed the best tissue adhesion strength of 233 kPa. This work indicates that by customizing an appropriate combination of different functional PEGylated dialdehydes to crosslink with CS, Schiff-base hydrogels with tailored processability and bioactive properties can be achieved to meet the requirements for specific biomedical applications.