Intention actions

Last modified: 15 April 2025

Open settings by pressing and navigate to Editor | Intentions.

Display available actions:

As you work in the editor, IntelliJ IDEA analyzes your code and searches for ways to optimize it. Intention actions cover a wide range of situations from errors and warnings to optimization suggestions.

As soon as the IDE finds a way to improve your code, it displays a yellow bulb icon yellow bulb icon in the editor next to the current line. By clicking this icon, you can view the intention actions available in the current context.

A red bulb with an exclamation mark the Quick-fix icon indicates that IntelliJ IDEA has detected a problem, and prompts you to select an associated fix — a quick-fix. Quick-fixes and intention actions together are called context actions.

Apply intention actions

  1. Place the caret at the code element that you want to modify. Then click the light bulb icon (or press ) to open the list of suggestions.

    Alternatively, select a piece of code and on the toolbar that appears, click .

    Intention preview opens automatically. If an intention is complex, and the preview cannot be generated, you will see the intention description. Hover over available intentions on the suggestion list to preview them.

  2. Press or click an intention on the list to apply it.

You can toggle the preview off and on by pressing or by enabling Show preview for intention actions when available in Settings () | Editor | General | Appearance.

Assign shortcuts to context actions

If you want to apply intention actions quicker, you can assign shortcuts to them. Currently, you cannot assign shortcuts to fixes that belong to code inspections.

  1. In the editor, place the caret at the code that triggers the intention action for which you want to assign a shortcut, and click the bulb icon or press .

    A list of available suggestions opens.

  2. In the list, click next to the necessary intention action and, from the menu that opens, select Assign shortcut.

    Assigning keyboard shortcut to intention action

  3. When the Keyboard Shortcut dialog opens, press the shortcut that you want to use for this action and click OK.

After that you won't need to open the list of suggestions to apply this intention action in the editor; you will be able to do it right away by pressing the configured shortcut.

You can find all your custom intention action shortcuts in settings: press , click Keymap, and locate the Intentions category.

View all intention actions

You can view the full list of available intention actions, and disable actions that you don't need at the moment. To open the list of intention actions:

  1. Press to open settings and then select Editor | Intentions.

  2. For each intention action, you can see a description and an example. To disable an intention, clear the checkbox next to it.

    Settings of intention actions

  3. Apply the changes and close the dialog.

Disable intention actions on the fly

  1. Place the caret at the code element that you want to modify. Then click the light bulb icon (or press ) to open the list of suggestions.

  2. Select the action you want to disable, click the right arrow next to it, and then click Disable <intention action name>.

    Disable intention action

Disable the intention action bulb icon

Do the following to hide the intention action icon Intention action icon and the quick-fix icon the quick-fix icon in the editor:

  1. Press to open settings and then select Editor | General | Appearance.

  2. Clear the Show intention bulb checkbox.

  3. Apply the changes and close the dialog.

Intentions vs. inspections

Code inspections also provide quick-fixes, but they have a different purpose.

Intention actions help improve your code or make it more efficient. These are not necessarily errors or warnings but rather improvements, optimizations, or helpful transformations.

Inspections detect problems and suggest fixes based on coding standards, performance concerns, or best practices. For more information, refer to Code inspections.

See also

Concepts