Prohibited exception thrown

Reports throw statements that throw an inappropriate exception. For example an exception can be inappropriate because it is overly generic, such as java.lang.Exception or java.io.IOException.

Example:

  void setup(Mode mode) {
      if (mode == null)
          throw new RuntimeException("Problem during setup"); // warning: Prohibited exception 'RuntimeException' thrown
      ...
  }

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.

ProhibitedExceptionThrown

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 | Java | Error handling

Use the Prohibited exceptions list to specify which exceptions should be reported.

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the Prohibited exception thrown inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Prohibited exceptions: Default value:
[java.lang.Throwable, java.lang.Exception, java.lang.Error, java.lang.RuntimeException, java.lang.NullPointerException, java.lang.ClassCastException, java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException]

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:

//noinspection ProhibitedExceptionThrown

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

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025