Class may extend a commonly used base class

Reports classes or interfaces that can be replaced with an implementation or extension of a more specific commonly used class or interface.

For this inspection to work, a superclass needs to be in project source files and the project needs to use the IntelliJ IDEA build system.

Example:

  class MyInheritor implements A {} // B suggested on the A reference

  interface A {}

  abstract class B implements A {}

  abstract class C1 extends B {}
  abstract class C2 extends B {}
  abstract class C3 extends B {}
  abstract class C4 extends B {}
  abstract class C5 extends B {}

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.

FrequentlyUsedInheritorInspection

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 | Inheritance issues

By default, this inspection doesn't highlight issues in the editor but only provides a quick-fix.

New in 2017.2

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 FrequentlyUsedInheritorInspection

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