Inlay hints

Inlay hints can be helpful, but on the other hand they take editor space and may seem redundant in some cases.

Therefore you can use the Push-to-Hint mode (which is enabled by default). It lets you keep the hints hidden, and only view them when needed by pressing and holding the Ctrl key. In this mode, you can also press Ctrl twice to toggle the hints in the current editor tab.

If you want inlay hints to be always shown or hidden, you can choose it with the Default visibility selector on the Environment | Inlay Hints | General page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O. Whatever you choose for the default visibility, you can override it for specific kind of hints on the corresponding settings pages under Environment | Inlay Hints.

As an alternative to writing named arguments in method calls, you can make use of ReSharper's parameter name hints — editor adornments that show parameter names next to the corresponding arguments at method calls.

Consider the following method call:

AddCheckbox(true, true, "AutoFill", null);

When you read this code, you have to stop and study the method signature to understand what happens here (you can do it either with the parameter information tooltip or by navigating to method declaration). With parameter name hints, the same call becomes much clearer:

tip

You can hover over an inlay hint to view the XML documentation of the corresponding symbol when available, or Ctrl-click to jump to the declaration.

The idea of the parameter name hints is to show parameter names for arguments whose intention may not be clear, but at the same time not to clutter the editor with hints where the argument purpose is obvious, and of course if there are named arguments in the call. To achieve this, ReSharper applies a number of configurable heuristics.

tip

With ReSharper, you can also configure a code style preference that will suggest using named arguments in your code.

Type name hints help you understand types variables and expressions have in different contexts. For example:

• anonymous types,

  

• parameters of lambda expressions,

  

• return types of methods in a call chain,

  

and in many other cases.

If necessary, you can configure type name hints for each specific case.

Type conversion hints show implicit type conversions in your code.

In the example below, converting from Vector3D to Vector2D silently loses data (the Z value) and the hint helps us see where this happens.

If you see that a type conversion hint for a specific conversion is not very helpful, you can disable conversion hints for all conversions involving those specific types. To do so, place the caret next to the assignment operator, press AltEnter and choose Configure Inlay Hints | Type Conversion Hints | Hide for.... The change will be saved, and you will be able to review or revert it later on the Environment | Inlay Hints | C# | Type Conversion Hints page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O.

You can display missing returns in functions and missing breaks in switch statements using inlay hints. This lets you immediately understand what exactly is missing:

You can use inlay hints to see places where resource variables are disposed:

If you are using the [MustDisposeResourceAttribute] from JetBrains.Annotations to enforce resource disposal in the calling code, ReSharper helps you visually identify constructors and factory methods that return a disposable resource:

To configure visibility of these hints, use the corresponding selectors on the Environment | Inlay Hints | C# | Other page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O.

Inlay hints will help you spot intercepted calls, with the additional ability to navigate to the interceptor method with AltEnter or with Ctrl+click on the hint icon:

The [InterceptsLocation] annotation on the interceptor method has a hint that allows you to navigate to the intercepted call:

To configure visibility of these hints, use the corresponding selectors on the Environment | Inlay Hints | C# | Interceptor Hints page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O.

You can see tuple component names as inlay hints when those names are not apparent from the component expression:

Inlay hints can greatly improve the readability of a deconstruction pattern by showing the declared names of its components:

When a method returns more variables than needed, and some are discarded with _, inlay hints can help you see what is discarded. By default, hints for discards work with push-to-hint:

To configure visibility of these hints, use the corresponding selectors on the Environment | Inlay Hints | C# | Other page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O.

#pragma warning directives allow you to disable and restore specific warnings by their ID. It is hard to remember what each ID means, therefore ReSharper can add inlay hints with warning descriptions. Note that this kind of hints only work with compiler warnings, whose IDs start with CS.

To configure visibility of these hints, use the corresponding selectors on the Environment | Inlay Hints | C# | Other page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O.

Having local functions at the end of a code block is a common practice, but when reading such blocks, you often need to scroll past local function definitions to make sure there is no executable code after them.

To improve readability in such cases, ReSharper offers inline hints that either visualize the implicit control flow markers such as return; and continue, or just show //Local Functions if there is no more executable code in the block.

To configure visibility of these hints, use the corresponding selectors on the Environment | Inlay Hints | C# | Other page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O.

When you are at the end of a large code block, it is often not clear what the closing brace represents: it can denote the end of a nested type, a method, or a complex statement. Inlay hints can quickly clarify the code structure by showing what exactly each closing brace is the end of:

To reduce the visual noise, these hints only appear for blocks that are longer than 10 lines, and only when your caret is set to a closing brace.

To enable or disable these hints, use the Use inlay hints to show matching blocks' headers... checkbox on the Environment | Editor | Appearance page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O.

You can toggle and configure inlay hints on the corresponding settings pages under the Environment | Inlay Hints page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O.

If you do not use inlay hints, you can disable them by clearing the Enable Inlay Hints checkbox on the Environment | Inlay Hints | General settings page. ReSharper will stop calculating hints thus saving some resources.

However, if you want to see only a few specific kinds of hints, you can set the Default visibility selector on that page to Never Show and then override this with visibility selectors for the desired types of hints.

For parameter name hints, you can additionally hide hints in methods matching specific patterns. To do so, add these patterns at the bottom of the Environment | Inlay Hints | [language] | Parameter Name Hints page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O.

Here are some examples of patterns:

• System.Math.* matches all methods whose FQN starts with System.Math

• System.Math.*(*, *) matches all methods from System.Math namespace with two parameters

• (*info) matches all single-parameter methods where the parameter name ends with info

• (key, value) matches all methods with parameters key and value

• Put(key, value) matches all Put methods with parameters key and value

When your caret is at a code item that has an inlay hint, you can press AltEnter, choose Configure Inlay Name Hints, or instead, right-click a parameter hint, and then pick one of the commands, which allow you to:

• hide parameter hints for all calls of the method, or type name hints that apply for the current item (if you want to show hints that you disabled, you can find the corresponding item or exception pattern in the options page and remove it),

• change visibility of this kind of hints,

• disable inlay hints altogether (you can enable them later in the options page),

• or open the options page for detailed configuration.

If you right-click a paramter name, type name, or a type name hint, you can also navigate to the declaration of the corresponding type or parameter declaration:

You can also toggle parameter name hints in the current solution with the CtrlAltShift05 shortcut or from the context menu of the status indicator:

You can configure the color and font size of inlay hints — the font size can be set on the Environment | Inlay Hints | General page of ReSharper options Alt+R, O, the font color — in Visual Studio options: go to Tools | Options | Environment | Fonts and Colors and find the ReSharper Inlay Hint in the list of display items.

This feature is supported in the following languages and technologies:

The instructions and examples given here address the use of the feature in C#. For more information about other languages, refer to corresponding topics in the ReSharper by language section.