Possibly unintended overload of method from superclass

Reports instance methods with the same name and the same number of parameters as a method in a superclass, but where at least one of the parameters is of a different incompatible type.

In this case, the method in a subclass will be overloading the method from the superclass instead of overriding it. If it is unintended, it may result in latent bugs.

Example:

  public class Foo {
    void foo(int x) {}
  }

  public class Bar extends Foo {
    void foo(Number x) {} // Method 'foo()' overloads a compatible method of a superclass,
                          // when overriding might have been intended
  }

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.

MethodOverloadsMethodOfSuperclass

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 | Visibility

Use the option to choose whether the inspection should also report cases where parameter types are not compatible.

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the Possibly unintended overload of method from superclass inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Report even if parameter types are not compatible: Default value:
Not selected

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 MethodOverloadsMethodOfSuperclass

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