JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Blog

One of not so well-known features of IntelliJ IDEA is an ability to differently highlight certain scopes in code editor.

To use it, open the Settings dialog, under IDE Settings expand Editor, then expand Colors & Fonts, and select Scope Based preferences. You will see a list of predefined scopes, and the Edit Scopes button that lets you easily create your own.

Each scope is assigned a distinct color/font scheme — just like different language elements in Java, which makes it easy to distinguish from other code in the editor.

In the following example, it is used to quickly differentiate between real testing code and JUnit Classes (pattern: lib:org.junit..*):



Other use cases include highlighting of, for example, third-party framework code, distinguishing normal code from assertions, etc.

Thanks to improvements in the internal indexes behind the Intellij IDEA code insight engine, Maia will be able to instantly highlight some java classes, methods and fields which are unused across the entire project.

To use the feature, enable the Unused declarations inspection.

Of course, all sorts of JEE @Inject annotations, test code entry points
and other implicit dependencies configured in the Unused declarations inspection
are deeply respected.