I switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ IDEA a while ago because it kinda was way easier to get the programming environment at work up and running with IntelliJ. And because I use it at work and don’t want to do the switch every time i start programming at home I decided to switch to IntelliJ here aswell.

Up until now I really got to like this fancy IDE from Jetbrains but there still were some annoyances I had to fix. The following section covers a few settings I’d like to mention because it makes my programming life a little easier

Allow placement of caret after end of line

When I click on a line I usually expect the caret to jump right to the ending of the line. Not so in IntelliJ. The caret keeps blinking exactly there where you clicked so I always had to press [END] to quickly move to caret behind the last character of the line. If you feel like disabling this behaviour you can do it as follows:

• Go to “File > Settings” or press “[Ctrl] + [Alt] + [S]“
• In the search dialog at the top left type “caret”
• Select the entry “Editor” (if not yet selected)
• Uncheck the setting “Allow placement of caret after end of line” and click OK

Highlight usages of element at caret

Another really handy feature which I know from Eclipse and was missing is the highlighting of all the element usages of the element your currently pointing at with the caret. To enable this do the following:

• Go to “File > Settings” or press “[Ctrl] + [Alt] + [S]“
• In the search dialog at the top left type “caret”
• Select the entry “Editor” (if not yet selected”)
• Check the setting “Highlight usages of element at caret” and click OK

These 2 convenience settings just made your life so much easier

I take further setting recommendations in the comments I’m thinking of adding some nice to know keyboard shortcuts to this article. I guess this article will be updated.