IntelliJ IDEA 2019.3 Help

Properties files

Properties files are text files with the .properties extension, containing localization strings in the form of key and value pairs, that can be accessed and rendered in the UI. These files are marked with the icon Properties file.

IntelliJ IDEA also recognizes properties files in XML format. They are marked with the icon XML properties file.

Several properties files with the same base name and a language-specific suffix can be combined into a resource bundle for convenience.

Create a properties file

  1. Right-click a directory where you would like to create the file.

  2. From the context menu of the target directory, choose New | File.

  3. In the New File dialog, type the filename with the corresponding extension .properties, and click OK.

Encoding of properties files

Standard Java API is designed to use ISO 8859-1 encoding for properties files.

To use other encodings, feed them as escape sequences and Unicode characters. Alternatively, define the default encoding for properties files on the project level and use a different API that can read properties files in the encoding you have defined.

Configure default encoding for properties files

  1. Open the Settings / Preferences dialog Ctrl+Alt+S, then click Editor and File Encodings.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • To have the special mode turned on when symbols are stored in a properties file as escape sequences but displayed as normal letters, select Transparent native-to-ascii conversion. This option is helpful when the properties files are encoded in ISO 8859-1. It is recommended to use this approach, if you don't have any special reasons to change the encoding.

    • In the field Default encoding for properties files, select the encoding that will be used for all properties files in the project.

Last modified: 26 April 2020