Utility class with 'public' constructor

Reports utility classes with public constructors.

Utility classes have all fields and methods declared as static. Creating a public constructor in such classes is confusing and may cause accidental class instantiation.

Example:

  public final class UtilityClass {
    public UtilityClass(){
    }
    public static void foo() {}
  }

After the quick-fix is applied:

  public final class UtilityClass {
    private UtilityClass(){
    }
    public static void foo() {}
  }

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.

UtilityClassWithPublicConstructor

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 | Class structure

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 UtilityClassWithPublicConstructor

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