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Intention actions

Last modified: 09 August 2022

As you work in the editor, RubyMine analyzes your code, searches for ways to optimize it, and detects potential and actual problems.

As soon as the IDE finds a way to alter your code, it displays a yellow bulb icon yellow bulb icon in the editor next to the current line. By clicking this icon, you can view intention actions available in the current context. Intention actions cover a wide range of situations from warnings to optimization suggestions. You can view the full list of intentions and customize them in the Settings/Preferences dialog Ctrl+Alt+S.

A red bulb with an exclamation mark the Quick-fix icon indicates that RubyMine has detected a problem, and prompts you to select an associated fix — a quick-fix. Quick-fixes and intention actions together are called context actions.

tip

Code inspections also provide quick-fixes but they have different settings. For more information, refer to Code inspections.

Apply intention actions

  1. Click the bulb icon or press Alt+Enter to open the list of suggestions and select an action from the list.

  2. Press Ctrl+Q or select View | Quick Documentation from the main menu to open an intention preview.

    If an intention is complex, and the preview cannot be generated, you will see the intention description. Hover the mouse pointer over available intentions on the suggestion list to preview them.

    Once activated, the preview will appear every time you open the list of available intention actions. To close the preview, press Ctrl+Q again while the list of intentions is open.

  3. Press Enter or click an intention on the list to apply it.

    For example, you can use an intention action to convert a code block between braces to the do...end block:

    Example of the intention action

Assign a shortcut to an intention

If you want to apply intention actions quicker, you can assign shortcuts to them. Currently, you cannot assign shortcuts to intentions that belong to code inspections.

  1. In the editor, place the caret at the code that triggers the intention action for which you want to assign a shortcut, and click the bulb icon or press Alt+Enter.

    A list of available suggestions opens.

  2. In the list, click App actions arrow expand next to the necessary intention and from the menu that opens, select Assign shortcut….

    Assigning keyboard shortcut to intention action

  3. In the dialog that opens, specify the shortcut that you want to use for this action and click OK.

After that you won't need to open the list of suggestions to apply this intention action in the editor; you will be able to do it right away by pressing the configured shortcut.

View all intention actions

You can view the full list of available intention actions, and disable actions that you don't need at the moment. To open the list of intention actions:

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+S to open the IDE settings and select Editor | Intentions.

  2. For each intention action, you can see a description and an example. To disable an intention, clear the checkbox next to it.

    Settings of intention actions

  3. Apply the changes and close the dialog.

Disable intention actions on the fly

  1. Click the light bulb icon (or press Alt+Enter) to open the list of suggestions.

  2. Select the action you want to disable, click the right arrow next to it, and then click Disable <intention action name>.

    Disable intention action

Disable the intention action bulb icon

You can disable the intention action icon Intention action icon and the quick-fix icon the quick-fix icon in the editor.

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+S to open the IDE settings and select Editor | General | Appearance.

  2. Disable the Show intention bulb option, apply the changes, and close the dialog.

See also

Reference

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