Boost Your Coding Efficiency with IntelliJ IDEA Scratch Files & Buffers

Many developers are drawn to IntelliJ IDEA for its sleek UI and powerful plugins, but the IDE also includes built‑in features that can dramatically speed up coding.

Scratch files | Scratch buffers

IDEA automatically creates a parallel directory for these tools, allowing you to work on temporary files without polluting your project.

Scratch files

Scratch files are fully functional, runnable, and debuggable files with syntax highlighting, code completion, and other language‑specific features—much like Jupyter notebooks.

They reside outside the project directory, so Git never tracks them, and they remain accessible when you switch to another project.

To create a Scratch file, press ⇧⌘N, type the desired file type (e.g., Java), and IDEA generates a file such as Scratch.java with a ready‑made main method.

You can verify that the file is untracked with git status.

For quick SQL testing, create a scratch.sql file, configure a data source, write your queries, and run them with ⌘⏎ after selecting the appropriate session.

Scratch buffers

Scratch buffers are simple text files without language assistance, similar to a plain notepad. Create one using the generic shortcut ⇧⌘A and typing “buffer”.

Each buffer is named scratch.txt; you can have up to five buffers simultaneously.

If you create a sixth buffer, the content of the first buffer (e.g., buffer1.txt ) will be cleared.

Both Scratch files and buffers are excluded from Git tracking, but you can view their change history via Local History .

Summary

Cross‑project accessibility

Not tracked by Git, preventing accidental commits

Ideal for quick experiments in various languages

Change history is viewable

Combine these tools with preview mode and recent‑file shortcuts to stay focused and reduce context switching.