'finalize()' should be protected, not public

Reports any implementations of the Object.finalize() method that are declared public.

According to the contract of the Object.finalize(), only the garbage collector calls this method. Making this method public may be confusing, because it means that the method can be used from other code.

A quick-fix is provided to make the method protected, to prevent it from being invoked from other classes.

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

FinalizeNotProtected

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Finalization

Example:

  class X {
    public void finalize() {
      /* ... */
    }
  }

After the quick-fix is applied:

  class X {
    protected void finalize() {
      /* ... */
    }
  }

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection FinalizeNotProtected

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025