Unused parameter

Last modified: Last modified: 18 September 2025

Reports the parameters that are considered unused in the following cases:

  • The parameter is passed by value, and the value is not used anywhere or is overwritten immediately.

  • The parameter is passed by reference, and the reference is not used anywhere or is overwritten immediately.

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

PhpUnusedParameterInspection
Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | PHP | Unused symbols

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the Unused parameter inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Ignore parameters of methods/functions with empty body

Default value:

Selected
Ignore parameters of overriding methods

Default value:

Selected
Ignore parameters of abstract classes' methods

Default value:

Not selected
Ignore parameters of anonymous functions

Default value:

Not selected
Don't report parameters accessed via 'func_num_args()'

Default value:

Not selected
Don't report when the property hook parameter is equal to the property type

Default value:

Not selected

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

note

Actual comment syntax will depend on the code language you are working with

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

Inspection Details

By default bundled with:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, PhpStorm 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2, Qodana for PHP 2025.2,