Explore IntelliJ IDEA 2021.3: Remote Development, Smart Refactoring, and New Spring Support

Remote Development (Beta)

IntelliJ IDEA 2021.3 introduces a beta remote development feature that lets you connect from anywhere to a backend machine running IDEA, handling all processing remotely as if it were local.

IDE Issue Repair

The new "Repair IDE" tool guides you through steps to diagnose and fix unexpected IDE failures directly from the File menu.

Quick Font Size Adjustment

Ctrl+mouse wheel (or ⌘+mouse wheel on macOS) now works again for smooth font scaling.

Markdown Table Optimization

Insert tables via right‑click → Insert → Table and navigate cells with Shift+Enter or Tab.

Unsafe String Checks in Java

The IDE now warns about SQL injection, XSS, sensitive data leaks, and unsafe deserialization. Annotate strings with @Untainted or @Tainted from the checker framework to enforce safety.

Improved Refactoring Operations

Introducing local variable extraction options via a gear icon or Alt+Shift+O (Windows) / ⌥⇧O (macOS). Parameter refactoring now prompts for replacement locations and offers additional settings via a gear icon.

Spring Support Enhancements

New Run/Debug Configurations dialog with more parameters.

Detection of potential blocking calls in Spring Data, RestTemplate, Feign, JPA, and @Transactional methods.

Code completion for spring.config.import in additional property/YAML files.

Auto‑completion for @Value, @Scheduled, and Environment.getProperty() values from application.yaml.