JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Blog

Have you noticed a small new button in the bottom left corner of IntelliJ IDEA window since version 10.5?
It lets you have more space in the main frame and give more prominence to the editor by hiding the tool window bars.

With the tool buttons hidden you, of course, still can access the tool windows using their numeric hotkeys, e.g. Alt+1 for Project view, Alt+9 for Changes, etc.

But if you need to refresh them in your mind, or want to open one with the mouse, you can show the tool window buttons just for a moment. To do that, hit the Alt key twice (Command key on Mac), and keep it down — while the key is pressed, the tool window buttons are visible. Release the key — and they disappear again, leaving your main frame large and spacious.

Give it a try if you have not yet!

Here are some new UI-related tricks which you may find useful:

1. Docked Navigation Bar (View | Navigation Bar) now shows Run/Debug controls if the toolbar is switched off.

2. You may also switch off Tool Buttons (View | Tool Buttons) and get them to appear on demand by pressing Alt key twice (or Command key on Mac OS X).

3. If the new dark tooltips on Mac OS are too hard for your eyes, go to “IDE Settings | Appearance | Tooltip mode” and set it to “System”.

These new features are available since recent IntelliJ IDEA 10 EAP, so try them now and tell us what you think!

Since IntelliJ IDEA is so much loved by keyboard addicts, here is a tiny yet helpful feature introduced in version 9.0.2: you can change size of a tool window by means of your keyboard.

Say, you’re doing “find usages”, the tool window is popping up and it’s too small for you to comfortably look at the usages tree. Now you don’t have to grab a mouse to stretch it up, just hit Ctrl-Shift-Up (Meta-Shift-Up for Mac users) and your tool window is getting bigger.

So, if you need to resize a tool window: focus it (by Alt-number or Ctrl-Tab) and then use Ctrl-Shift plus an arrow key that points to the direction you want.

You can also use these arrow shortcuts to resize dialogs and actually any window that IntelliJ IDEA shows. Say, you opened the project structure dialog and it’s too narrow for you. Use Ctrl-Shift-Right and Ctrl-Shift-Down to make it bigger.

In Maia, it’s finally possible to open a file in associated application (for example, .doc or .pdf) by double-clicking it in Project View or by pressing F4. This works for file types, registered under Files opened in associated applications.


The dialog displayed after you double-click a file of an unknown type also gives you options to associate its type with an application:


Also, Project View and Open File dialogs now display file type icons as they are registered in your OS, instead of generic unknown file icon.

Maia brings a new powerful action Ctrl+Tab that allows you to switch between open files in editor and tool windows. It works similar to Alt+Tab on Windows or ⌘+Tab on Mac.



There are two columns: tool windows and open files (tabs). Navigation is available through the use of navigation keys and Tab (forward) or Shift+Tab (backward) keys.

Is there anything else you think would be handy to have in Switcher Panel?

One of the features that has been voted most in our JIRA is the possibility to drag & drop files between IntelliJ IDEA and native file managers — Explorer on Windows and Finder on Mac. In previous IntelliJ IDEA versions, some of this functionality was provided by plugins like Native Neighborhood. In Maia, this is finally supported natively, letting you:

• Drag a file from Explorer/Finder and drop it on editor to open it in a new tab
• Drag a file from Explorer/Finder and drop it on a folder in Project view to copy or move it to that folder
• Drag a file from the Project view and drop it on a folder in Explorer/Finder to copy or move it to that folder.

Hold the Ctrl key (⌘ on Mac) while dragging to copy a file, or move it otherwise.

Feel free to leave comments and post JIRA issues to share your ideas on other possible use cases for this feature.

In Maia you can quickly look up a value in a debugger session by hovering your mouse over it (which is very handy for text values, for example):


When you need to browse through a large tree of values, this popup can be set to appear only after you invoke it.


The trick is that it is still viewable, but only when you hover mouse over a value holding the Alt key. Hitting Alt when the popup is open hides it — but that’s what you probably have already guessed.

There is also an option in the Settings dialog:

In the upcoming Maia EAP you won’t find separate actions for creating classes, interfaces, enums or @interface anymore. Just one action that does not clutter your desktop — New Java Class.
This does not mean you won’t be able to create interfaces, enums and annotation types, though:

The same functionality will be available for Groovy classes.

A little-known new feature of IntelliJ IDEA 8.0 is that it allows you to have two docked toolwindows visible on each side of the screen. So you can, for example, view your changes and your TODO list at the same time at the bottom of IntelliJ IDEA window.
In order to configure this, you need to use drag & drop — for example, to view the TODO list in the right part of the bottom area, you should drop its button to the bottom right corner of the screen.
I have recorded a short screencast showing how this can be done:

You can use either a Wheel Click or Shift+Left Click to close things in the IntelliJ IDEA user interface.

Here is a short list of what exactly can be closed:

• Editor tabs
• Tool window headers and tabs inside tool windows (yes, you can just wheel-click that blue header)
• Popups like Background Tasks — just click the popup header
• Version control annotations in the code editor

You can even stop a background process without having to hit that small red cross-shaped button — just wheel-click the progress indicator.