How to Fix Chinese Garbled Text in IntelliJ IDEA Console: 4 Proven Steps

Introduction

IntelliJ IDEA may display Chinese characters as garbled text in the console, severely affecting debugging and information retrieval. The article summarizes four effective solutions.

1. Modify Tomcat Server VM Options

Open Run → Edit Configurations… , select the web project's Tomcat server, and add -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 to the VM options. Restart IDEA and verify the console output.

2. Set Global, Project, and Properties File Encodings to UTF‑8

Navigate to File → Settings… , locate Editor → File Encodings , and set Global Encoding , Project Encoding , and Default encoding for properties files to UTF-8. Restart IDEA and check the console.

3. Customize IDEA VM Options

Open Help → Edit Custom VM Options… and add -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 at the end of the idea64.exe.vmoptions file. Restart IDEA; the issue is usually resolved.

4. Directly Edit IDEA Configuration Files

Locate the IDEA installation directory, open the two configuration files with a text editor, and append -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 on the last line of each. Restart IDEA and verify that the console now displays Chinese characters correctly.

Conclusion

By applying any of the four methods above, you can fully resolve the Chinese garbled text problem in IntelliJ IDEA’s console. Remember to restart the IDE after each change to make the configuration effective.