'public' constructor in non-public class

Reports public constructors in non-public classes.

Usually, there is no reason for creating a public constructor in a class with a lower access level. Please note, however, that this inspection changes the behavior of some reflection calls. In particular, Class.getConstructor() won't be able to find the updated constructor (Class.getDeclaredConstructor() should be used instead). Do not use the inspection if your code or code of some used frameworks relies on constructor accessibility via getConstructor().

Example:

  class House {
    public House() {}
  }

After the quick-fix is applied:

  class House {
    House() {}
  }

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.

PublicConstructorInNonPublicClass

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 | Visibility

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 PublicConstructorInNonPublicClass

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