JetBrains Rider
 
Get JetBrains Rider
Get your hands on the new features ahead of the release by joining the Early Access Program for Rider 2025.1! Learn more

Change the boot Java runtime of the IDE

Last modified: 11 October 2024

As a Java application, JetBrains Rider requires a Java runtime environment (JRE). By default, JetBrains Rider uses JetBrains Runtime (a fork of OpenJDK), which is included with the IDE. JetBrains Runtime fixes various known OpenJDK and Oracle JDK bugs, and provides better performance and stability. However, in some cases you may be required to use another Java runtime or a specific version of JetBrains Runtime.

The path to the selected runtime is stored in the rider.jdk or rider64.jdk file in the JetBrains Rider configuration directory. If there are problems with the selected runtime, you can delete this file to revert to the default runtime.

You can also override the runtime used for JetBrains Rider by adding the RIDER_JDK environment variable with the path to the desired JDK home directory.