Boost Your Java Productivity: 15 Must-Have IntelliJ IDEA Plugins & Tips

1. Install Plugins

Codota – intelligent code completion that suggests whole statements based on your project code and shows usage frequency.

Another view of Codota’s suggestions.

Key Promoter X – shows shortcut hints in the bottom‑right corner, helping you learn key bindings quickly.

CodeGlance – displays a miniature overview of the file, making navigation easier when the codebase is large.

Lombok – removes boiler‑plate getters, setters, constructors, toString, hashCode, etc., from your Java classes.

Alibaba Java Coding Guidelines – checks code against Alibaba’s Java standards and highlights issues with inline hints.

CamelCase – quickly convert between camelCase and snake_case using ⇧+⌥+U.

MybatisX – enhances MyBatis development with navigation, code generation and inspections.

SonarLint – provides real‑time code quality feedback, recommending logger usage instead of System.out.

Save Actions – automatically optimizes imports, adds final modifiers, inserts this where appropriate, and enforces consistent formatting.

CheckStyle – similar to Alibaba guidelines, checks code style and formatting.

Grep Console – lets you customize console output with colors and filters.

MetricsReloaded – analyzes code complexity and provides visual metrics.

Statistic – offers quick statistics about lines of code, classes, methods, etc.

Translation – provides on‑the‑fly translation of selected text.

Rainbow Brackets – colors matching brackets with the same hue, improving readability.

2. Custom Live Templates

Define shortcuts like apr to auto‑generate @Autowired statements, tailoring templates to your coding habits for faster development.

3. Global Configuration Tweaks

Optimize import settings to auto‑add missing imports and organize them efficiently.

Show tabs in multi‑line mode to view more files simultaneously.

Convert comments from double slashes to block comments placed before code.

Copy whole line with a single shortcut, regardless of selection.

Disable case‑sensitive matching so typing s still suggests String.

Improve VCS directory colors for clearer version‑control visualization.

Auto‑generate author and timestamp when creating new files.

Show line numbers and method separators for better navigation.