The best IntelliJ IDEA productivity plugins for Java developers

In this post, we list the most useful IntelliJ productivity extensions for Java developers.

Table of contents:

• IntelliJ & Java
• IntelliJ plugins to boost Java development productivity
  • String Manipulation
  • Key Promoter X
  • Maven Helper
  • Symflower
  • JRebel & XRebel
  • Rainbow Brackets
  • WakaTime
  • More Java tips

IntelliJ & Java

IntelliJ IDEA is one of the most popular IDEs, with almost 30% of all professional developers using it. Among Java developers, it reigns supreme: 72% of Java developers claim to use it. IntelliJ IDEA is so popular for good reason: it offers a variety of tools to promote development productivity, and comes packaged with plugins for Maven, Gradle, Lombok, Docker, and more.

A range of other plugins or extensions is available for IntelliJ IDEA, whether developed by JetBrains or third-party teams, to further enhance your coding efficiency. We’ve collected the extensions we think are best if you’re looking to boost your productivity when writing and testing Java code.

IntelliJ plugins to boost Java development productivity

String Manipulation

If you often find yourself having to interact with large volumes of text, formatting that text can be a productivity drainer. Enter plugins like String Manipulation, which provides string handling capabilities including filtering, sorting, capitalization, changing the coding style (e.g. switching to camelCase for instance) or encoding (e.g.to HEX, but also converting non-ASCII chars to Unicode), and so on. It also lets you make mass edits by enabling changes to all lines of the string in a single operation.

Key Promoter X

Mouse-free development with the adept use of keyboard shortcuts is the ultimate productivity-boosting tool – once it becomes second nature. But getting there can be a long and bumpy road of learning and getting into the habit of using hotkeys. The Key Promoter X plugin helps you learn hotkeys by showing you the shortcuts you could have used every time you click on an element within the IDE. It also gives you a top list of mouse actions and corresponding keyboard shortcuts that you use most often.

Maven Helper

Maven is still the leading build system used by over 76% of Java developers. It’s great for maintaining the structure of your projects, managing dependencies, and it also supports the build process – but conflicting dependencies can cause issues that can lead to overhead. That’s why we love Maven Helper: it provides support in analyzing and resolving conflicting dependencies, and also offers a tree view on those dependencies for a clean visualization of conflicts.

Symflower

Since testing is consuming much of your coding time, we have to add our own plugin to the list. With Symflower, you can save valuable time when creating tests by generating smart unit test templates and test suites. Smart test templates contain all the boilerplate code (including imports, annotations, object initializations, function calls, asserts, and more) for your tests. All you need to do is fill in the right test values and you’re good to go.

Generating complete test suites takes it a step further. Use Symflower’s test suite generation feature to create entire test suites with the right values to cover paths in your code:

Symflower also provides test-backed diagnostics in real time, highlighting uncaught exceptions as you code:

JRebel & XRebel

Repeating the build loop every time you make a small change is a major time consumer. JRebel is a plugin that reloads your code instantly. By skipping the rebuild, restart, and redeploy cycle, using JRebel can improve your focus by enabling you to stay in the flow. XRebel, on the other hand, is a code analysis tool that gives you performance insights that you can use to improve your code. It helps identify, resolve, and validate performance issues, and filters out irrelevant data so that you can stay focused on the problem. XRebel helps boost the performance of both your code and your coding process at the same time.

Rainbow Brackets

A staple in many developers' tool sets, Rainbow Brackets is a simple plugin that highlights nested brackets and parentheses with different colors. With many nested statements in Java, you may end up spending seconds matching opening and closing brackets. Rainbow Brackets does away with that problem by color-coding brackets, making it easy to see at a glance where parenthesized statements end. Use it to greatly improve visibility in your code and to simplify debugging syntax.

WakaTime

Improve, measure, iterate – that’s how you achieve continuous improvement, and that general pattern also applies to programming. WakaTime helps you implement that principle by providing metrics, insights, and time tracking for your coding activity. Think of WakaTime as a fitness tracking watch for coding. Just install it and it will automatically monitor your programming pace and offer visualized metrics that help enhance your productivity. Pro tip: it can also be used to boost coding productivity for teams!

More Java tips

Did we miss a good extension? Send us your favorite plugins so that we can extend this post. Make sure you try generating test templates or test suites with Symflower to save time and improve productivity.

Make sure you never miss any of our upcoming content by signing up for our newsletter and by following us on X, LinkedIn, or Facebook.