Manage and Apply Code Formatting Rules

Auto-format edited and pasted code

When you type code in the editor, ReSharper reformats expressions as soon as you type a semicolon ; and reformats blocks of code as soon as you type a closing brace }. If necessary, you can disable these kinds of auto-formatting on the Environment | Editor | Behavior page of ReSharper options(Alt+R, O).

ReSharper also lets you automatically apply your formatting rules when you paste code. By default, pasted code is not fully reformatted but only indentation settings are applied. If you want to fully format pasted code, or disable formatting on paste, use the Auto-format on paste selector on the Environment | Editor | Behavior page of ReSharper options(Alt+R, O).

Note that by default, Visual Studio applies its own formatting rules for edited and pasted code. If you are using ReSharper auto-formatting features, we recommend that you disable Visual Studio auto-formatting. You can do it in Visual Studio options (Tools | Options). For C# for example, clear the corresponding check-boxes on the Text Editor | C# | Code Style | Formatting | General options page.

Reformat existing code

ReSharper provides several ways to reformat existing code. In short, you can always use Control+Alt+L, but there are a few details and alternatives described below.

You can reformat code in the current selection right from the Alt+Enter action list.

Alternatively, you can use code cleanup to reformat code in any scope. Code cleanup may be helpful if you want to combine code reformatting with applying other code styles.

If you want to reformat code without opening the Code Cleanup dialog to choose a profile, you can bind the default Reformat Code profile to the silent cleanup and run it by pressing Control+Shift+Alt+F. You can also create a custom cleanup profile that would combine code reformatting with other code style tasks.

Use code inspection to maintain formatting rules in C# and C++

In C# and C++, code formatting style can be also maintained using the code inspection features. ReSharper provides several dozens of formatting inspections, which are all disabled by default.

Depending on the solution, your codebase may have hundreds of minor formatting violations, like different indent sizes across methods, different case-label indents in switch-statements, missing line breaks, and so on. Enabling code inspections for all those violations could be too noisy.

On the other hand, there are formatting problems that decrease code readability or may influence your understanding of the code. For example:

• multiple type members on one same line,

• multiple statements on one line,

• incorrect indent around child statement,

• incorrect indent around declaration braces.

For such formatting problems, we recommend enabling code inspections.

Keep existing formatting

You can apply some formatting rules 'softly', meaning that such rules will be applied when ReSharper produces new code with code completion and code generation features, applies code templates and performs refactorings, but these rules will be ignored when you reformat existing code (for example, with Control+Alt+L).

To keep formatting rules less strict, use the Keep existing..., Keep max blank lines, and Simple wrap preferences for specific contexts. You can check or change the configuration of those preferences in ReSharper options(Alt+R, O):

Reformat code with different line-break styles

ReSharper also allows you to use explicit actions rather than formatting rules to reformat similar code in different ways. These actions are most helpful when you opt to keep existing formatting for the related rules. However if you have stricter settings, then the corresponding explicit formatting actions will not work because such configurations mean that formatting rules should be always applied in the affected contexts. For example, if Keep existing... preferences are disabled, then the wrap/chop/spacious/compact commands described below will render the same result. If some wrapping rules are set to Chop..., code in the corresponding contexts will be always chopped even if you invoke wrap/compact commands.

Configure code-formatting rules

Formatting rules can be configured to a very high level of detail. For example, you can define whether whitespaces should be placed around a specific operator or whether to indent nested using statements.

As an alternative to digging through options pages, you can select a block of code and configure only those formatting rules that are applicable to that block. You will be able to observe how modified formatter settings affect code in the selected block right in the editor.

Use formatting rules from existing code

Another alternative to tweaking individual formatting preferences is to learn formatting rules from an existing code sample, which can be a selected block, the current file, a set of files, one or more projects, or the entire solution. ReSharper will analyze the selected sample and list formatting rules that differ from your current settings. You will then be able to review the detected rules, change them as required, and save them to the desired settings layer or to a configuration file in the .editorconfig or .clang-format format.

Use comments to configure formatter

ReSharper allows you to deviate from the configured formatting rules without actually changing the rules. You can even disable formatter altogether in certain parts of your code.

You can configure formatter with comments in C#, C++, JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, and Protobuf.

To disable formatter, use the following comments:

• // @formatter:off — disable formatter after this line

• // @formatter:on — enable formatter after this line

If disabling formatter is too much, you can change any individual formatting rule with a comment.

Store and share formatting rules

Your code formatting preferences are saved using the mechanism of layer-based settings. Among other things, this mechanism allows you to maintain different preferences for different solutions as well as to keep these preferences under a VCS and automatically share them with your team members.

You can also configure formatting settings via in EditorConfig for all languages and Clang-Format for C++, JavaScript, and TypeScript. These settings can be stored in .editorconfig, .clang-format, or _clang-format files on different levels of your solution hierarchy. The files are normally put under VCS so that settings defined there are shared among the project team.
ReSharper lets you use EditorConfig to define any of its formatting preferences that are available in the ReSharper's Options dialog. You can find names and descriptions of supported EditorConfig properties in the EditorConfig reference.
As for Clang-Format, ReSharper will only apply the supported Clang-Format options.

It is important to note that any formatting property defined in an .editorconfig file will override the same property defined in ReSharper settings in the scope where this .editorconfig file applies. Formatting properties defined in Clang-Format will override both ReSharper settings and EditorConfig settings.

Another important thing to know when sharing formatting options is that indent style (tabs/spaces) and size are by default taken from Visual Studio options. If you want to share these preferences for specific language, clear the Use indent style and size from Visual Studio checkbox on the Code Editing | [Language] | Formatting Style | Tabs and Indents page of ReSharper options and save the change to a shared settings layer.