Also known as Fix anything, ⌥⏎ (macOS) / Alt+Enter (Windows/Linux) is a great shortcut to know by heart. Invoke Context Actions ⌥⏎ (macOS) / Alt+Enter (Windows/Linux) on any piece of code to see suggestions to improve or change your code.

IntelliJ IDEA offers intelligent suggestions most places in the code. It can offer fixes for compiler errors and inspection warnings. It can even use intentions to suggest other ways in which you could write code even if there's no warning or error.

IntelliJ IDEA lets you know that it has suggestions for you with a light-bulb on the left-hand side of the code. This light-bulb is red for errors, and yellow for other suggestions.

If there's an error in the code, pressing ⌥⏎ (macOS) / Alt+Enter (Windows/Linux), can suggest options that will make the code compile.

If there's a warning, IntelliJ IDEA will show you what the warning is, and may offer one or more suggestions on how to fix that warning. These warnings are often from inspections running on the code.

Even if the code is working perfectly well, pressing ⌘⌥⏎ (macOS) / Ctrl+Alt+Enter (Windows/Linux), will often show suggestions on other ways to express this code. These suggestions can help us to reshape the code, for example to make it more readable, or as part of a larger refactoring towards some other pattern. These suggestions can often be configured via intentions.

Use F2 (macOS) / F2 (Windows/Linux) to navigate to the next suggestion, or ⇧F2 (macOS) / Shift+F2 (Windows/Linux) to navigate to the previous suggestion in the file.

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.

Focus on your code with Hide Tool Windows ⌘⇧F12 (macOS) / Ctrl+Shift+F12 (Windows/Linux). You can use the same shortcut to bring them back again. Or use Zen mode from the menu View | Appearance | Enter Zen Mode.

Press⌃⇧␣ (macOS) / Ctrl+Shift+Space (Windows/Linux) to invoke smart completion. If the type can be determined then the list of suggestions will be filtered to the correct type.

Here are some places you can use it:

• In the right part of assignment statements
• In variable initializers
• In return statements
• In the list of arguments of a method call
• After the new keyword in an object declaration
• In chained expressions

You should get in the habit of using statement completion because it's a great way to keep your code compiling. You can use the keyboard shortcut ⌃⇧⏎ (macOS) / Ctrl+Shift+Enter (Windows/Linux) to add your semicolons, finish your methods and more.

When you open a source file in the editor, you may see warnings or errors in this file. You can quickly step through to check all these issues without having to use the mouse, just press F2 (macOS) / F2 (Windows/Linux).

While you're coding, you may want to jump to the next error or warning F2 (macOS) / F2 (Windows/Linux) or the last one ⇧F2 (macOS) / Shift+F2 (Windows/Linux). This way, you can quickly hop to the next thing that needs fixing or addressing without having to move your hand to the mouse.

Combine this with Alt+Enter (Windows/Linux) to quickly see the suggested solution to the problem and apply a fix. This will show a list of suggested solutions, as we saw in the tip about Context Actions, and we can pick the solution that suits us best.

If you're confident IntelliJ IDEA has the correct fix for the problem, you can skip the step of listing the solutions. Press F2 (macOS) / F2 (Windows/Linux) to navigate to the problem, then press ⌥⇧⏎ (macOS) / Shift+Alt+Enter (Windows/Linux), to accept IntelliJ IDEA's suggested fix.

The Problem

You're busy hammering out line after line of amazing code but when you're done, and you look up to marvel at your masterpiece, you see that the indentation is all wrong.

The Solution

You can quickly reformat the whole file by invoking "Reformat Code" ⌘⌥L (macOS) / Ctrl+Alt+L (Windows/Linux).

As you'd expect, this works in any JetBrains IDE.

However, what if you just want to reformat just one block of code? For example, maybe the whole team changed their code style, and you don't want a large full file reformat to be part of this specific commit. In that case, select the code you want to reformat and again invoke "Reformat Code" ⌘⌥L (macOS) / Ctrl+Alt+L (Windows/Linux).

You can reformat code at the directory level too! Invoke your Project tool window ⌘1 (macOS) / Alt+1 (Windows/Linux), select the directory you want to reformat and invoke "Reformat Code" ⌘⌥L (macOS) / Ctrl+Alt+L (Windows/Linux) again. A word of warning here, you probably don't want to mix large commits that include reformatting and code changes - it can make deciphering the commit harder for the next person.

Lastly, there are additional settings you can use for reformatting your code which you can access by invoking the "Reformat Code Dialog" ⌘⌥⇧L (macOS) / Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L (Windows/Linux). The options here will vary depending on which type of code you're working with so try it out and see what you can learn!

The Problem

Have you ever been deep into a project, only to realize that you forgot to include something crucial in a file? We've all been there, so let's learn how to prevent this from happening to us again. While the tabs at the top of your screen are helpful, they can be a little bit overwhelming.

The Solution

Instead of searching for a certain tab, let’s use our IDE. One convenient way to find certain files is using the Recent File Window. It gives you a nice list of all the files you have visited recently. It is automatically sorted in the order you have visited them, which makes going back so much easier

Well, that is already a great improvement, but we can do even better! What if the file you are looking for is at the very bottom. Well sure we could press arrow down like a hundred times, or worse use the mouse, or we just type directly into the window, which lets you search for a particular file.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could narrow it to only the files you edited, not all you visited? In the upper right corner, you see the “Show edited only” files. This will help you remove some clutter and hides the files you just visited without doing any changes, and you can even open a certain file in a split window to have a look at multiple files at the same by clicking on the icon on the right side or pressing Shift or Enter.

I got one more for you, let’s check it out! If we look to the left side of our Recent Files Window we see all the amazing tools we recently used. You want to jump to the Terminal? Just type in “T-E-R” and it will take you right there.

Development is hard! and having a good overview of edited files is difficult. Luckily our IDEs make navigation really convenient!!

Press ⌘⇧E (macOS) / Ctrl+Shift+E (Windows/Linux), to navigate around the files that you've opened recently.

You can filter the recent locations list to files that you've changed by using the same shortcut again.

Run anything ⌃⌃ (macOS) / Ctrl+Ctrl (Windows/Linux) allows you to run any of your Run Configurations as well as scripts and commands such as mvn clean or gradle --status. You can also use Run Anything to open your recent projects. Press ? to see the available options and then run Maven Goals, Gradle Tasks, Open a Project or Run an existing run configuration.

You can run a process with ⌃R (macOS) / Shift+F10 (Windows/Linux). To stop a process, you can use ⌘F2 (macOS) / Ctrl+F2 (Windows/Linux).