Tech Updates

Published on Jan 20, 2011

IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse Shortcuts

Klaus Lehner

After around seven years of exclusively using Eclipse for Java development I recently got the chance to work on a project where IntelliJ IDEA is the standard editor. All of a sudden my tried and tested Eclipse keyboard shortcuts didn’t work any more. I’m still in the process of learning the IntelliJ Shortcuts but here are my favourites up to now (with equivalent Eclipse shortcuts). This may be of help to anyone else switching over from Eclipse to IntelliJ. Of course, there is an IntelliJ Plugin available which makes IntelliJ IDEA behave like Eclipse (same shortcuts and compiler behaviour) but why do that?

In the table below, in some cases, the shortcuts do not map 1:1 but they achieve the same effect.

Eclipse IntelliJ IDEA Description
F4 ctrl+h show the type hierarchy
ctrl+alt+g ctrl+alt+F7 find usages
ctrl+shift+u ctrl+f7 finds the usages in the same file
alt+shift+r shift+F6 rename
ctrl+shift+r ctrl+shift+N find file / open resource
ctrl+shift+x, j ctrl+shift+F10 run (java program)
ctrl+shift+o ctrl+alt+o organize imports
ctrl+o ctrl+F12 show current file structure / outline
ctrl+shift+m ctrl+alt+V create local variable refactoring
syso ctrl+space sout ctrj+j System.out.println(“”)
alt + up/down ctrl + shift + up/down move lines
ctrl + d ctrl + y delete current line
??? alt + h show subversion history
ctrl + h ctrl + shift + f search (find in path)
“semi” set in window-> preferences ctrl + shift + enter if I want to add the semi-colon at the end of a statement
ctrl + 1 or ctrl + shift + l ctrl + alt + v introduce local variable
alt + shift + s alt + insert generate getters / setters
ctrl + shift + f ctrl + alt + l format code
ctrl + y ctrl + shift + z redo
ctrl + shift + c ctrl + / comment out lines (my own IDEA shortcut definition for comment/uncomment on german keyboard layout on laptop: ctrl + shift + y)
ctrl + alt + h ctrl + alt + h (same!) show call hierarchy
none ? ctrl + alt + f7 to jump to one of the callers of a method
ctrl + shift + i alt + f8 evaluate expression (in debugger)
F3 ctrl + b go to declaration (e.g. go to method)
ctrl + l ctrl + g go to line

 

One other thing I didn’t realise at first is that the ‘Scroll to Source’ button in IntelliJ IDEA is basically the same as the ‘Link with Editor’ button in Eclipse.