Tuning IntelliJ IDEA
In this section:
- Changing IntelliJ IDEA properties
- Managing *.vmoptions file
- Managing idea.properties file
- Specifying custom JDK, properties or vmoptions files across platforms
Changing IntelliJ IDEA properties
IntelliJ IDEA makes it possible to change *.vmoptions
and
idea.properties
files without editing them in the IntelliJ IDEA installation folder.
To create an empty idea.properties
file or to copy
*.vmoptions
file, choose
the or
on the main menu respectively. Refer to the
menu items description for details.
Managing *.vmoptions file
For Mac OS X systems:
Since version 12.0.0:
The file /Applications/IntelliJ Idea XX.app/bin/idea.vmoptions
or /Applications/IntelliJ Idea CE XX.app/bin/idea.vmoptions
should be copied to ~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdeaXX/idea.vmoptions
or ~/Library/Preferences/IdeaICXX/idea.vmoptions
Since version 14.0.0:
The file/Applications/IntelliJ Idea XX.app/Contents/bin/idea.vmoptions
or /Applications/IntelliJ Idea CE XX.app/Contents/bin/idea.vmoptions
should be copied to ~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdeaXX/idea.vmoptions
or ~/Library/Preferences/IdeaICXX/idea.vmoptions
For the older versions, the settings are stored in
/Applications/IntelliJ IDEA <version>.app/Contents/Info.plist
.
To avoid editing files in the IntelliJ IDEA installation folder, one should:
- Do one of the following:
- Copy the existing file from the IntelliJ IDEA installation folder somewhere and save the
path to this location in the environment variable
IDEA_VM_OPTIONS
. - Copy the existing file
<IntelliJ IDEA installation folder>/bin/idea$BITS.vmoptions
from the IntelliJ IDEA installation folder into the location under user home:- For *NIX:
$HOME/.IntelliJIdeaXX/idea$BITS.vmoptions
or$HOME/.IdeaICXX/idea$BITS.vmoptions
- For Windows:
%USERPROFILE%\.IntelliJIdeaXX\idea%BITS%.exe.vmoptions
or%USERPROFILE%\.IdeaICXX\idea%BITS%.exe.vmoptions
The value of the variable BITS depends in the JVM used to run IntelliJ IDEA:
Refer to the support article Selecting the JDK version the IDE will run under for details.
- For *NIX:
- Copy the existing file from the IntelliJ IDEA installation folder somewhere and save the
path to this location in the environment variable
- Edit this file in the new location.
If IDEA_VM_OPTIONS
environment variable is defined, or the
*.vmoptions
file exists,
then this file is used instead of the file located in the IntelliJ IDEA installation folder.
Example: Increasing the heap size
To increase IntelliJ IDEA heap size, you should copy the original idea.vmoptions
file to the
above-mentioned location, and then modify the -Xmx
setting.
Managing IDEA.properties file
The file idea.properties
, located in the bin
directory of the IntelliJ IDEA installation folder, should not be edited. Instead of editing the original
idea.properties
, create file idea.properties
in the location specified below, open it for editing and add the required
properties.
So, depending on your platform:
- For Windows: in
%USERPROFILE%\.IntelliJIdeaXX
or%USERPROFILE%\.IdeaICXX
- For *NIX: in
~/.IntelliJIdeaXX
or~/.IdeaICXX
- For Mac OS X: in
~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdeaXX
or~/Library/Preferences/IdeaICXX
Example: Changing case of unicode literals
IntelliJ IDEA allows defining whether non-ascii characters should use literals like '\u00AB'
or '\00ab'
.
This behavior is controlled by the system property idea.native2ascii.lowercase
. By default,
upper case characters are used.
If it is desirable to use lower case characters, create the file idea.properties
in the location specified above, open it for editing and add the following line:
idea.native2ascii.lowercase=true
Specifying custom JDK, properties or vmoptions files across platforms
A custom JDK, *.properties
and *.vmoptions
files are specified across platforms in
a unified way.
All the launchers look at the following environment variables: