Top IntelliJ IDEA Plugins and Settings to Boost Development Efficiency

After installing IntelliJ IDEA, the following plugins and settings can increase work efficiency tenfold.

1. Codota Code Completion Plugin

Type the first letters of a class or method and Codota suggests the full statement, showing usage frequency based on learned project code.

2. Key Promoter X Shortcut Hint Plugin

Shows a popup with the corresponding shortcut each time a command is used, helping users learn IDE shortcuts quickly.

3. CodeGlance Mini‑Map Plugin

Displays a thumbnail overview of the entire file, making navigation easier when the code base is large.

4. Lombok Plugin

Automatically generates getters, setters, constructors, toString, hashCode, etc., reducing boilerplate in Java entity classes.

5. Alibaba Java Coding Guidelines Plugin

Checks code against Alibaba's Java standards, highlights violations, and provides inline suggestions.

6. CamelCase Naming Conversion Plugin

Convert between camelCase and snake_case quickly with Shift+Alt+U, useful for bulk refactoring.

7. MybatisX Plugin

Provides powerful MyBatis mapper navigation, code completion, and XML‑SQL synchronization.

8. SonarLint Code Quality Plugin

Detects bugs, code smells, and security issues in real time, recommending logger usage over System.out.

9. Save Actions Formatting Plugin

Automatically optimizes imports, adds final to unchanged variables, inserts this where appropriate, and enforces consistent formatting.

10. CheckStyle Plugin

Similar to the Alibaba plugin, it enforces coding conventions and highlights style violations.

11. Grep Console Custom Output Plugin

Allows custom coloring and formatting of console output for easier log analysis.

12. MetricsReloaded Complexity Analyzer

Measures code complexity metrics to help maintainable codebases.

13. Statistic Code Statistics Plugin

Provides quick statistics on lines of code, classes, methods, etc.

14. Translation Plugin

Translates selected text directly within the IDE.

15. Rainbow Brackets Plugin

Colors matching brackets with the same hue, improving readability of nested code.

Additional tips include creating custom Live Templates for rapid code insertion, optimizing import settings, enabling multi‑line tab display, copying entire lines without selection, disabling case‑sensitive matching, customizing VCS directory colors, auto‑inserting author and timestamp on new files, and showing line numbers with method separators.

Feel free to share which IntelliJ IDEA plugins you find most useful for boosting productivity.