The Problem

How do I find stuff, without memorizing a bunch of stuff? You’re editing something. You want to jump to something in your project. The IDE has so many options. What’s the fastest way?

You could browse through the file tree to find the file. Similarly, activate the navigation bar and wander around. Lots of other choices: Recent Files, Recent Locations, bookmarks, keeping a thousand tabs open.

The Solution

Press ⇧⇧ (macOS) / Shift+Shift (Windows/Linux) for Search Everywhere. The one IDE entry point to find everything. Type a string, make a selection, and jump to the target.

To dismiss the popup, press Escape. You can jump to a file by putting in the name of a file, not something in the file. You can type parts of a file path, to save some time. Those tabs show the kinds of things that can be searched. Hit tab to go Classes, then again to go to Files.

Mouseover on the tabs to show key bindings to open directly. “Symbols” is a favorite. Actions…the next tip. Want more power? Here’s three bonus tips:

• This checkbox controls how widely Search Everywhere goes looking. Press ⇧⇧ (macOS) / Shift+Shift (Windows/Linux) again to toggle it to checked, then again to unchecked.
• Use filter… to restrict results by certain criteria, per-tab.
• Click Open in Find Tool Window to get the full find treatment.

Yes, you can resize this window, as if it was a normal window. Next time you use Search Everywhere, it will remember the dimensions. Last point: the footer area has…tips! As you can see from these, lots of power in Search Everywhere.

Here’s one you didn’t see coming: Search Everywhere is also a desktop calculator.

Search Everywhere is the perfect first thing. Super-easy to learn, immediately useful, and gradually scales to more power.

The Problem

You want to move a line up. You could use the mouse to select the line, cut it, go to the next line up, and paste it. You know the IDE has an action that can do it, but…what is it?

Let’s use the mouse and look in the Edit menu. Hmm, not there. How about Code? Ahh, yes, it’s there, with the keyboard shortcut. Maybe you speed that up by learning the shortcuts. There’s the Keyboard Shortcuts PDF. You could try memorizing all of that... possibly but nor probable.

The IDE has a lot of power, which means a lot of actions, with new ones coming in each release, not to mention plugins. You’re not going to memorize all them. Does the IDE have a better way?

The Solution

What you need is Find Action, a single keyboard shortcut to memorize. The one ring to rule them all. ⌘⇧A (macOS) / Ctrl+Shift+A (Windows/Linux):

Type “move line up” and you’ll see the Move Line Up Action. Bonus: the keyboard shortcut is shown when an action has one.

That’s a lot to type. Instead, use speed typing to type just fragments such as "m | u". Maybe you don’t know the full action name. Just type one word to get in the ballpark such as "type".

One last point: Find Action also matches preferences, and some are inline toggleable. Want to disable tabs without opening settings/preferences? Start Find Action and type ta pl no for the Window | Editor Tabs | Tabs Placement: None preference. Press Enter to toggle it.

Remember…you don’t have to remember! Keyboard shortcuts, that is. Let Find Action be your one-stop-shopping for actions.

Use ⇧⇧ (macOS) / Shift+Shift (Windows/Linux), to bring up the Search Everywhere dialog. You can type in CamelCase to search across Classes, Files, Symbols, Actions and Git.