7 Must Have IntelliJ IDEA Plugins For Java Developers

IntelliJ IDEA is one of the popular IDEs for programming in Java. Java developers really like it but sometimes we have to do many things manually which is kind of boring and time-consuming. But IntelliJ IDEA is smart, it knows exactly when to come to the rescue with the armor and guard of various time-efficient and cool plugins. There are various plugins that we can install in our IntelliJ IDEA IDE to make things easier but sometimes it becomes confusing and hectic to choose the right set of plugins to boost up our Java development as there are plenty of them available in the market.

We’ll see the 7 Must-have IntelliJ IDEA Plugins For Java Developers in this article. First of all, let us understand What are plugins? Plugins are software components that provide certain features to an existing computer program without altering the host program itself. For convenience, we can install all the plugins via the Plugins tab on the Welcome screen.  

1. Rainbow brackets Plugin

Breaking news! People who sometimes miss seeing rainbows in the sky can see them in the IntelliJ IDEA. No, We are not kidding.  

While writing Java code having many nested loops and statements, it’s difficult to track which opening bracket corresponds to which closing bracket. Here, the rainbow brackets plugin helps as it pairs the opening and closing brackets with the same color by color-coding. It is an excellent tool for debugging syntax and prevents us from getting lost in the ocean of many brackets. This plugin is for sure a blessing for Java developers as complex nested loops with so many pairs of brackets seem like a nightmare when even a single bracket is missed out.  

2. Maven Helper Plugin

If you have worked on Maven or are familiar with it, you must be familiar with the dependencies and the overhead one has to face if those dependencies conflict. Maven helper plugin is a superhero in this regard as it analyzes and resolves the conflicting dependencies. Moreover, it helps in running the goals of Maven which can help in building and maintaining a project. One of the unique features of it is that it provides dependencies in the form of a tree so that one can visualize the dependencies better as we are well aware that pictures and visualization are more understandable and catchy.  

3. JRebel Plugin

Tired of performing the build process of Java code every time, even when you perform a slight change in your code? JRebel Plugin heard our prayers and it is here to make the process of rebuilding project effortless. It reloads the code instantly, we make any changes to our code thus allowing us to skip the rebuild, restart and redeploy loop. This helps developers to be in a flow while coding so that they don’t have to waste their time in rebuilding the project again and again and ultimately boosts productivity and saves a lot of time.

4. Grep Console Plugin

Are you done with searching for a word or a pattern in your long code just like searching a twig in the heap? If it’s a yes…then the grep console plugin will make it easy for you as you can give a pattern or a regular expression that will be searched in the code. It also colorizes the text based on the regex pattern given so that it becomes more catchy and colorful to look for the desired expression. Grep is like the grep command in Linux which helps to find the desired pattern. If you are a Java developer and use Linux or have an interest in learning Linux, then you’ll definitely have a soft corner for this plugin.  

5. Git toolbox Plugin

Using Git is common nowadays and pushing code to git is an obvious thing for Java and other developers. What if the task of pushing to git can be simplified? And that too just by adding a plugin? Git toolbox plugin is a Git integration that performs auto fetch, status display, commit dialog, and many more operations of Git in our IntelliJ IDEA on its own. It reduces the overhead of typing the commands every time to perform the git operations and thus, we can see our git workflow in real-time without doing much work.

6. Database Navigator Plugin

When working on a data-driven application or writing a simple program requiring operations on data, the database cannot be ignored. Database Navigator plugin is a package in itself for database-related tasks as it provides a wide range of development capabilities along with database connection management, browsing of database objects, and many more. It provides IDE-compliant SQL and PL/SQL support. The supported databases for Database Navigator Plugin are MySQL, SQLite, Oracle, and PostgreSQL. It is very helpful for IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition as the database operations can be performed with the help of this plugin. For Java developers, it eliminates the overhead of coding Java and PL/SQL in the different IDEs.

7. WakaTime Plugin

Just like smartwatches track our fitness, isn’t it a good idea that our code should also have a fitness tracker so that the health of the code can be monitored. Unhealthy codes will have health problems like bugs and this can even reduce the efficiency of the code. IntelliJ IDEA has a WakaTime plugin which is like a fitness tracker for our code. It automatically provides visual and appealing insights and metrics. It is very beneficial for monitoring our own programming pace so that improvements can be done on it and that productivity can be increased. It automatically generates time tracking from our programming activity.  

So, these were the 7 Must-have IntelliJ IDEA Plugins For Java Developers. These IntelliJ IDEA plugins will make it a lot easier for us to work on IntelliJ IDEA as a Java developer.  

While Java is already rich with features and functionalities, above mentioned plugins add more features to working on our Java code because with plug-ins, customization also comes into the picture which has always been a good idea to get things as per our needs.