IntelliJ IDEA 2021.1

Tips to get you productive with the new or improved features in IntelliJ IDEA 2021.1

There's a new release of IntelliJ IDEA three times a year. See the highlights of the current release with this list of tips, or see What's New for more detailed information.

Use a lightweight inspection profile on commit (tip)

Fully customise the checks you must perform before you commit your changes to version control

Data flow analysis (tip)

Data flow analysis is always being improved to show us potential errors in our logic.

Preview HTML updates in real time (tip)

See what your changes look like as you make them

Evaluate JSON Path expressions (tip)

Use IntelliJ IDEA to check if your JSON Path expression are correct.

Prevent a package depending upon another (tip)

Enforce architecture rules, such as data access layers not depending upon UI layers.

Generate UML diagrams for your Kotlin code (tip)

JVM developers working with Kotlin code can create UML diagrams for their Kotlin classes, just like they could with Java classes

Run your code with Docker, SSH or WSL (tip)

Set a Run Target to change where your code runs

Profile your application (tip)

See how your application is performing with the built-in profiler

Change your code font weight (tip)

We spend hours looking at our code. We can make this as pleasant as possible.

Tips for working with JetBrains Space (tip)

Space is an all-in-one collaboration tool, including chat, code repository, code review, issue tracking, and much more.

Code Reviews with Space (tip)

Perform code reviews without leaving the IDE.

Create Record (tip)

Create a new Java record class

Convert class to record (tip)

Use inspections to convert classes to Java 16 records

Convert from Record (tip)

Use quick intentions to convert a record to a class

Use Pattern Matching for instanceof (tip)

Inspections can guide us to use new Java features

Identify and fix deprecated calls (tip)

IntelliJ IDEA will warn you if you're using deprecated methods, and they will be shown with a strikethrough if they're marked for removal

Use new methods on the Streams API (tip)

Inspections can show us new features from Java 16

Turn on Preview Features to try new Java features (tip)

The latest versions of Java contain "Preview Features", features that are fully functional but require developer feedback. Try them out in IntelliJ IDEA.