JetBrains Rider
 
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  1. Code style and cleanup
  2. Format code with spaces, tabs, and line breaks
  3. Configure formatting rules

Configure formatting rules

Last modified: 25 September 2024

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.

tip

You can also configure code formatting using EditorConfig.

Configure code formatting rules in settings

  1. Press CtrlAlt0S or choose File | Settings (Windows and Linux) or JetBrains Rider | Preferences (macOS) from the menu .

  2. Use the Editor | Code Style | [Language] pages to configure language-specific formatting preferences. On these pages, you can use the preview area at the bottom to view just how JetBrains Rider applies the specific preference to the code.

  3. Click Save in the Settings dialog to apply the modifications and let JetBrains Rider choose where to save them, or save the modifications to a specific settings layer by choosing this layer from the Save selector. For more information, see layer-based settings.

Exclude files from reformatting

You can exclude a group of files and directories from reformatting.

  1. In the Settings/Preferences dialog (CtrlAlt0S) , go to Editor | Code Style.

  2. Switch to the Formatter tab and in the Do not format field, enter the files and directories that you want to exclude using a glob pattern.

    You can specify several glob patterns separated with a semicolon ;. If you click the Expand icon, the field will expand, and each pattern will be shown on a separate line.

    tip

    Enter the asterisk * wildcard to disable reformatting altogether.

  3. Apply the changes and close the dialog.

    Specifying a glob pattern for excluding files from reformatting

tip

As there are many ways to configure formatter settings, you may want to learn where the configuration settings for the current file are coming from. To do so, press Ctrl0Q or choose Help | Find Action from the main menu. In the popup that opens, start typing Show Code Style Configuration, select the corresponding item and press Enter.

Configure formatting rules for selected code

As an alternative to digging through setting 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 settings affect code in the selected block right in the editor.

note

Contextual configuration of formatting rules only works for C# and C++.

  1. In the editor, select a block of code where you want to formatting.

  2. Press AltEnter and choose Reformat and cleanup | Configure code style.

  3. In the dialog that opens, you will see all syntax style and formatting rules that affect the selected code block. The code block itself will be surrounded with a dotted frame:

    Configuring formatting rules for selected code

  4. As you change the formatting rules, you will see how they affect the code in the selected block.

  5. Click Save in the dialog to apply the modifications and let JetBrains Rider choose where to save them, or save the modifications to a specific settings layer by choosing this layer from the Save selector. For more information, see layer-based settings.

  6. Note that you can also choose to export the configured formatting rules to EditorConfig by choosing .editorconfig in the Save To selector.

  7. Optionally, you can click Save As Comments. This way your modifications will be saved as comments before and after the selected block. This lets you override desired formatting rules locally without modifying any settings.

  8. JetBrains Rider will close the dialog and apply modified formatting rues in the code block.

Learn 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 or the entire solution. JetBrains Rider 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.

note

Detection of formatting rules only works for C# and C++.

Learn formatting rules from selection

  1. In the editor, select a block of code where you want to analyze formatting.

  2. Press AltEnter and choose Reformat and cleanup | Detect code style settings.

  3. Review the rules that differ from your current settings:

    JetBrains Rider: Using formatting rules from existing code

  4. Click Save in the dialog to apply the modifications and let JetBrains Rider choose where to save them, or save the modifications to a specific settings layer by choosing this layer from the Save selector. For more information, see layer-based settings.

  5. You can optionally click Save As Comments. This way your modifications will be saved as comments before and after the selected block. This lets you override desired formatting rules locally without modifying any settings.

Learn formatting rules from solution code

  1. Press CtrlAlt0S or choose File | Settings (Windows and Linux) or JetBrains Rider | Preferences (macOS) from the menu , then choose Editor | Code Style | [C# or C++] on the left.

  2. Click Auto-Detect Code Style Rules at the top of the settings page.

  3. Review the rules that differ from your current settings and edit them if necessary.

  4. Click Save in the dialog to apply the modifications and let JetBrains Rider choose where to save them, or save the modifications to a specific settings layer by choosing this layer from the Save selector. For more information, see layer-based settings.

note

When you run auto-detection of formatting rules in a specific scope and then JetBrains Rider doesn't suggest changing any settings, or you accept all suggestions, you may expect that nothing will be changed the next time you reformat code in that scope.

However, there may be places where code was originally formatted in some unusual way, and there are no settings to define that way of formatting. If this is the case, JetBrains Rider may still reformat those places.

Use comments to configure formatter

JetBrains Rider 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#, JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, and Protobuf.

note

Formatter comments do not work with the old formatting engine. To make sure that you use the new formatting engine, clear the Revert to old formatting engine checkbox on the Editor | Code Style | C# | Other page of JetBrains Rider settings CtrlAlt0S.

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.

Change an individual formatting rule with a comment

  1. Find the name of formatting rule that you want to tweak. You can look it up on the Editor | Code Style | [Language] page of JetBrains Rider settings CtrlAlt0S.

  2. When you know the name of the rule, you can look up its ID in the Index of EditorConfig properties — use search in your browser. For example, if you want to find the rule that triggers the space before the semicolon, search for before semicolon and you will find the ID: space_before_semicolon.

  3. When you found the ID of the rule on the index web page, click the description link to learn which values are allowed for this rule. Following the example with space_before_semicolon, it can accept true or false.

  4. Add the following comment before the code where you want to change the rule:

    // @formatter:<rule_ID> <value>

    For example, to enable spaces before the semicolon, add:

    // @formatter:space_before_semicolon true

    .

  5. The new value for the rule will apply until the end of the file. If you want to go back to the value configured in the settings, add the following comment:

    // @formatter:<rule_ID> restore

    For example:

    // @formatter:space_before_semicolon restore

    .

Store and share formatting rules

Rider stores its code formatting preferences using both directory-based settings (for web languages) and layer-based settings (for .NET languages). Both setting-management mechanisms support sharing of settings. Layer-based settings are also compatible with ReSharper.

In the Rider settings dialog, you can look at the icons to see which setting-management mechanism is used for specific language:

Rider: Code formatting settings

You can also configure formatting settings via in EditorConfig. These settings can be stored in .editorconfig 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.

JetBrains Rider lets you use EditorConfig to define any of its formatting preferences that are available in the JetBrains Rider's Settings dialog. You can find names and descriptions of supported EditorConfig properties in the EditorConfig reference.

It is important to note that any formatting property defined in an .editorconfig file will override the same property defined in JetBrains Rider settings in the scope where this .editorconfig file applies.

Troubleshoot formatting settings

There are many ways to configure formatting preferences: proprietary settings, , auto-detected settings, EditorConfig, Clang-Format, and so on. That makes your configuration very flexible, but if you get unexpected results after reformatting code, it may be difficult to understand where formatting settings are actually coming from.

To explore settings and configuration files that affect formatting in the current file, press Ctrl0Q or choose Help | Find Action from the main menu. In the popup that opens, start typing Show Code Style Configuration, select the corresponding item and press Enter.

JetBrains Rider. Code Style Configuration dialog

Here you can study the origins of code style settings for the currently opened file: