12 Useful Plugins for IntelliJ: Improve Your Development!

Table of Contents:

• Marvin Wendt
• 1. Overview of the IDE Features Trainer Plugin
• 2. Using Material Theme UI to Improve the Interface
• 3. Codota: An Innovative Tool for Programmers
• 4. Highlighted Comments: The Comments Highlighter Plugin
• 5. Return Highlighter: A Handy Plugin for Developers
• 6. GitHub Actions: An Innovative Tool for CI/CD
• 7. Key Promoter X: Speed ​​Up Your Workflow
• 8. Manipulate Strings Efficiently with the String Manipulation Plugin
• 9. Get Unique File Icons with Atom Material Icons
• 10. .ignore Plugin: Simplify Ignore File Management
• 11. Collaborate with Code With Me
• 12. Improved emoji support with the Yet Another Emoji Support plugin.
• What are the next steps?

Marvin Wendt

About the Author

The author is an experienced professional in his field, possessing deep knowledge and skills. He actively shares his expertise through various platforms, including blogging and social media. His work covers a wide range of topics, allowing him to engage his audience and establish trusting relationships with readers. With a unique approach to content creation, the author strives to provide useful and relevant information that promotes development and learning. With a constant desire to improve and research new trends, he remains at the forefront of his profession, inspiring others to achieve success.

Marvin Wendt is an experienced developer and writer who actively promotes the ideas of open source software. His publications contribute to a deep understanding of technology and its impact on the daily lives of users. Marvin's knowledge and practical experience provide valuable insights into programming, development, and the use of open source solutions, making his contributions vital to the community.

JetBrains is a company that creates software development tools that help developers improve their productivity and code quality. Their products, such as IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, and others, are widely used in the industry and offer powerful features for editing, debugging, and testing.

The Open Source Initiative is an organization that promotes open source software. They support and protect license agreements that allow users to freely use, modify, and distribute software. Open source software fosters innovation and collaboration within the developer community, making it an essential element of modern programming.

Using JetBrains tools in combination with open source principles can significantly simplify the development process and improve the quality of the final product.

1. IDE Features Trainer Plugin Review

Let's start with a key tool—the IDE Features Trainer plugin from JetBrains. This plugin completed beta testing in 2020, and the latest version available today was released in October 2021. IDE Features Trainer helps developers master IDE features, increasing their productivity and efficiency. Through interactive lessons and hands-on exercises, users can quickly become familiar with the development environment's capabilities, significantly accelerating the learning process and improving code quality.

IDE Features Trainer is an interactive assistant that helps users master IntelliJ IDEA functionality. It teaches keyboard shortcuts and their combinations, significantly speeding up their workflow. Even experienced developers can discover new features and improvements that were previously unnoticed. This tool is ideal for increasing productivity and streamlining your workflow in the development environment.

2. Using Material Theme UI to Enhance Your Interface

Material Theme UI is a versatile plugin that allows you to integrate unique color schemes into JetBrains IDEs, improving the user experience. It not only simplifies navigation but also makes the interface more intuitive and aesthetically pleasing. With Material Theme UI, you can customize your work environment to your preferences, which will increase productivity and comfort.

Material Theme UI offers a significant advantage in the form of compact drop-down menus. This feature is especially valuable for developers who use many tools and options. Compact menus help optimize the workspace, simplifying access to essential functions and improving the user experience. Efficiently organizing the interface allows you to focus on development, minimizing visual clutter and increasing productivity.

3. Codota: An Innovative Tool for Programmers

Codota is a powerful plugin that is a real find for programmers. Using artificial intelligence, it analyzes millions of open source repositories on GitHub and offers intelligent code completion suggestions. This significantly speeds up the development process, allowing developers to focus on solving more complex problems and improving the quality of their code. Codota streamlines their workflow, making it more productive and efficient.

This tool significantly simplifies the process of writing code and promotes its quality, reducing the likelihood of errors. Codota uses machine learning algorithms to optimize its recommendations, making it an indispensable assistant for developers. Using Codota not only speeds up development but also helps create more reliable and efficient applications, which is especially important in modern programming.

The Codota plugin clearly illustrates its capabilities through working examples. It offers users powerful tools to increase productivity during software development. Through integration with various IDEs, Codota provides intelligent suggestions and automatic code completion, making the programming process easier. Users can review plugin usage examples to better understand how it can improve their workflow and speed up development. Codota helps developers find solutions to complex problems by leveraging best practices and existing code, thereby improving the quality and efficiency of software projects.

Codota developers strongly recommend paying attention to a more advanced tool — Tabnine. This tool provides an even higher degree of intelligent code completion, which can significantly improve development efficiency. Using Tabnine allows developers to speed up the code writing process and improve its quality through intelligent prediction and automation of routine tasks.

Using AI assistants like GitHub Copilot for code generation raises many questions. In recent discussions, we have addressed the topics of authorship of derivative code, its impact on the development industry, and legal aspects, highlighting the importance and relevance of these technologies. Issues related to intellectual property rights and ethical standards are becoming increasingly significant in the context of the rapid development of artificial intelligence.

Using Codota can significantly increase developer productivity, but it is necessary to consider the ethical and legal aspects of integrating artificial intelligence into the programming process. These aspects include maintaining source code copyright, data privacy, and algorithmic transparency. When used correctly, Codota can be a powerful tool that not only speeds up development but also contributes to improved code quality. Maintain a balance between efficiency and responsibility to ensure sustainable and ethical development of technologies in the programming field.

4. Highlighted Comments: Comments Highlighter Plugin

The Comments Highlighter plugin offers effective solutions for streamlining comment management in your projects. This tool allows you to highlight comments in different colors, which significantly improves the visual structure and facilitates navigation through important information. Using Comments Highlighter promotes more productive collaboration within the team, as each member can quickly find and analyze important comments. Integrating this plugin into your workflow will make your team more organized and increase the efficiency of project work.

Highlighting significant comments in bright colors makes them easier to find and analyze. This is especially important for large teams processing a huge amount of information. With the Comments Highlighter tool, you can significantly increase productivity and reduce errors. Using such methods allows you to optimize the process of interaction in a team and improve the quality of the final result.

5. Return Highlighter: A Handy Plugin for Developers

Return Highlighter is an essential tool for programmers working with complex code. This plugin automatically highlights return keywords, drawing attention to the corresponding lines. The highlighting is designed to be undistracting yet still visible, helping you avoid missing important points in your code. Using Return Highlighter significantly simplifies the process of reading and analyzing code, making it more convenient and efficient for developers.

To use the plugin, simply click the icon next to a line of code. This will allow you to quickly jump to the return statement, greatly simplifying code navigation and helping minimize the likelihood of errors. Effective use of the plugin increases your productivity and improves code quality.

The return statement plays an important role in programming, providing an exit from subroutines such as functions and methods, and allowing you to return values. It is a key element in programming languages ​​as it provides effective control over the flow of code. Using return allows developers to control when and how data is returned from functions, which helps create more structured and readable code. Proper use of the return statement improves the organization of program logic and simplifies debugging.

For more information about the Return Highlighter plugin, visit the official JetBrains Marketplace website. Here you will find all the necessary details, including functionality, installation instructions, and user reviews, which will help you better understand the capabilities of this plugin.

The Return Highlighter plugin is an indispensable tool for large projects where complex code structures can make it difficult to understand the logic. With it, you can significantly improve code quality and optimize the development process, which will make your work more efficient. Using Return Highlighter allows you to quickly find and analyze returns in the code, which is especially important in large projects.

6. GitHub Actions: An Innovative Tool for CI/CD

GitHub Actions is a powerful tool that integrates with your development environment (IDE). It allows you to track the results of code testing as part of the continuous integration (CI) process on the GitHub platform. This solution significantly simplifies development, allowing developers to focus on completing tasks without being distracted by additional processes. GitHub Actions enables workflow automation, increasing productivity and code quality.

7. Key Promoter X: Speed ​​Up Your Workflow

The Key Promoter X plugin is a powerful tool for developers designed to optimize their keyboard workflow. It reminds users of available hotkeys every time they use the mouse. This not only speeds up the programming process but also improves their recall of useful keyboard shortcuts. Using Key Promoter X can significantly increase developer productivity by allowing them to focus on their code rather than mouse movements. Integrating this plugin into your workflow can lead to more efficient use of time and reduced wrist strain.

Key Promoter X is a tool that tracks interface button presses and their frequency. This information allows users to identify keyboard shortcuts that improve their efficiency. For example, I noticed that I was using the application launcher button about four thousand times, whereas I could have significantly reduced that time by using the Shift + F10 shortcut. Using Key Promoter X helps optimize your workflow and increases productivity because it allows you to quickly adapt to more convenient methods of interacting with software.

8. Powerful String Manipulation with the String Manipulation Plugin

The String Manipulation plugin provides extensive string editing capabilities in your code. It lets you easily transform text into various styles, including camelCase, kebab-case, SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE, and many others. For a more detailed explanation of each style, refer to our comprehensive notation guide. This will significantly simplify your work with text and improve the quality of your code, ensuring consistency and readability.

The plugin offers powerful functions for sorting strings, manipulating numbers, and formatting data into tables. These capabilities greatly simplify working with text information, especially for developers looking to optimize their code and improve its readability. Using this plugin allows you to increase the efficiency of working with data and speed up the development process, which makes it an indispensable tool in the arsenal of every developer.

9. Unique File Icons with Atom Material Icons

The Atom Material Icons plugin doesn't add any new features to your integrated development environment (IDE), but it significantly improves the visual perception of files. This is especially useful for developers working on projects with a large number of different files and data types. Bright and intuitive icons help you navigate your project faster, simplifying navigation and increasing overall productivity. Using Atom Material Icons allows you to create a more organized and aesthetically pleasing workspace, which is especially important for effective software development.

Atom Material Icons allow you to quickly and efficiently find the files you need thanks to intuitive icons, significantly simplifying navigation and increasing overall productivity. In projects containing numerous elements, using the right icons can significantly save time, allowing you to focus on completing tasks. These icons help organize your workspace, which is especially important for developers and designers working on complex projects.

10. .ignore Plugin: Simplifying Ignore File Management

The .ignore plugin is a powerful tool for working with ignore files such as .gitignore and .hgignore. It greatly simplifies the creation and management of these files by providing support for various formats. Using the .ignore plugin streamlines the developer workflow by allowing you to quickly and easily configure exceptions for version control systems.

This plugin allows developers to efficiently create ignore files, which is especially useful when working with different development environments. The plugin supports a variety of formats that can be used in your projects. This simplifies file management and helps avoid unnecessary errors when working with version control systems. Use this tool to optimize your development process and improve the quality of your code.

The .ignore file supports a variety of formats, making it a universal tool for managing exceptions in various systems. Supported formats include .gitignore for Git, .hgignore for Mercurial, .npmignore for NPM, .dockerignore for Docker, and .chefignore for Chef. Also available are .cvsignore for CVS, .bzrignore for Bazaar, .boringignore for Darcs, .mtn-ignore for Monotone, and .ignore-glob for Fossil. Additionally, there are .jshintignore files for JSHint, .tfignore for Team Foundation, .p4ignore for Perforce, .prettierignore for Prettier, and .flooignore for Floobits. Also supported are .eslintignore for ESLint, .cfignore for Cloud Foundry, .jpmignore for Jetpack, .stylelintignore for StyleLint, .stylintignore for Stylint, .swagger-codegen-ignore for Swagger Codegen, .helmignore for Kubernetes Helm, .upignore for Up, .ebignore for Elastic Beanstalk, and .gcloudignore for Google Cloud. Using these formats allows you to effectively control which files and directories should be ignored during development, which leads to more organized and cleaner code.

11. Collaborative Development with Code With Me

Code With Me is a cutting-edge plugin from JetBrains that enables real-time project collaboration. This tool allows programmers to create sessions, sharing their development environment with friends and colleagues. This significantly simplifies collaboration, improves communication, and enables teams to solve problems more effectively. Code With Me optimizes workflows by allowing developers to collaborate on code, conduct code reviews, and share knowledge, ultimately leading to higher-quality projects.

One of the plugin's key features is terminal sharing. This allows participants without the necessary tools to test and make changes to the product effortlessly. This approach significantly simplifies the process of learning and demonstrating projects, especially in a remote work environment. Sharing access to the terminal promotes more effective interaction between team members, which in turn speeds up the development and implementation of solutions.

12. Improved Emoji Support with the Yet Another Emoji Support Plugin

The Yet Another Emoji Support plugin offers developers an effective solution for integrating emoji into editor text. This is especially useful for creating attractive GitHub README files and personalizing commit comments, making them more informative and visually appealing. Emoji help improve the readability of messages and highlight important changes in the code, which can improve information comprehension. Using this plugin not only adds an element of interactivity but also improves overall engagement with users and colleagues.

This tool is highly popular among adherents of gitmoji, a methodological approach that uses emoji to indicate the types and purposes of code changes. Gitmoji helps standardize developer comments, making them more understandable for both team members and external contributors. Using Gitmoji simplifies the coding process and improves communication between developers, increasing the overall efficiency of working on projects.

This plugin not only allows you to add emoji but also develop unique design styles for your projects. This can become an important element of your brand in the developer community. To learn more about gitmoji and how to use it, visit the project's official website. Integrating this tool will help you stand out from the competition and attract attention to your developments.

What are the next steps?

Practice using these plugins and share your experiences with colleagues and friends. If you want to deepen your knowledge, explore other tools for both server-side and client-side development. This will allow you to improve your skills and increase your competitiveness in the job market. Developing web applications requires ongoing learning, so don't miss the opportunity to master new technologies and approaches.