'public' field

Reports public fields. Constants (fields marked with static and final) are not reported.

Example:

  class Main {
    public String name;
  }

After the quick-fix is applied:

  class Main {
    private String name;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
  }

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.

PublicField

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 | Encapsulation

Configure the inspection:

Use the Ignore If Annotated By list to specify annotations to ignore. The inspection will ignore fields with any of these annotations.
Use the Ignore 'public final' fields of an enum option to ignore public final fields of the enum type.

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the 'public' field inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Ignore if annotated by: Default value:
[org.junit.runners.Parameterized.Parameter]
Ignore 'public final' fields of an enum type: 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 PublicField

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