Category: Java

Voxxed Days Bucharest: The end of an era

Almost two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking at Voxxed Days Bucharest 2026. This was my third Voxxed Days Romania event; I’ve spoken at Voxxed Days Bucharest before in 2024, and in 2022 I gave two talks at Voxxed Days Cluj-Napoca, including stepping in as the closing keynote speaker to replace Tom Cools who unfortunately couldn’t make it.

Travelling

On the plane from Schiphol to Bucharest, I immediately ran into fellow Dutch speakers Alexander Chatzizacharias and Sander Hoogendoorn. It turned out that Sander and I were both staying near the new venue so we took an Uber together from the airport. Ana-Maria Mihalceanu had very helpfully shared instructions with the speakers on how to best get to our hotels. 

Speaker dinner

Since the speaker dinner was near the old venue, Sander and I ended up walking across Bucharest for about an hour, partially through a park.

The speaker dinner was a nice place to catch up with fellow speakers. Some I has seen only the week before at different conferences. The food was a wonderful display of Romanian hospitality, as always. 

Conference day

The conference was opened by organisers Andra Ghibuțiu and Alex Proca. Andra revealed that this was sadly the last edition of Voxxed Days Romania. It was an honor to be part of this event. Fortunately, Andra and Alex will continue to organise different events in Romania.

Sander gave one of the keynotes on the conference day, which unfortunately I did not get to enjoy as I had to go and prepare for our talk, which was scheduled right after. It was nice that he mentioned me, and also used something in his keynote that we had talked about the evening before on our way to the speaker dinner. 🙂

Piotr and I once again took the stage with Learning modern Java the playful way, after three conferences in four days the week before!

You can watch it here:

As always, it was a joy to give this talk, and the audience was wonderful! Thank you for your lovely feedback.

The slot right after ours belonged to George Patrașcu. Our talks were scheduled back to back, which meant a hasty change over between speakers, mics and laptops. In the confusion, Piotr left the dongle for his clicker behind on stage. We only found out after he had already left. Fortunately we were both speaking at Devoxx UK the following week, so I could return it to him there.

The hallway track

One of the things I love most about conferences is seeing friends and meeting new people. At Voxxed Days Bucharest I got to catch up with some familiar faces, like Abdel Sghiouar, Ana-Maria Mihalceanu, Brian Vermeer and Loïc Magnette. I also got to meet new speakers like George Patrașcu, and talk with other attendees. This is a good way to hear what people are working on, and get feedback on how we can help them better.

And of course, some of the best conversations happened in the hallway track in between sessions.

Leaving for Munich

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay until the end of the event, as I had to travel to Munich where I had to record a video the next day.

Thank you!

Many thanks to Andra, Alex and the whole team of organisers and volunteers for making Voxxed Days Bucharest 2026 such a lovely event. And of course, thanks to all the sponsors and attendees who made it possible. It was a privilege to be part of this final edition, and I wish Andra and Alex all the best with their future endeavours.

Links

Three conferences in four days: JCON, Devoxx France and Devoxx Greece

Two weeks ago I had an extremely busy week: speaking at three conferences in three different countries in four days — JCON (Cologne, Germany), Devoxx France (Paris) and Devoxx Greece (Athens). We had the opportunity to give our talk “Learning modern Java the playful way” three times! It was well worth it, as I got to see so many people and our talk was well received everywhere.

JCON Europe

On Monday, I took the train to Cologne.

Social media post by Marit van Dijk with the text "On my way to JCON". The post contains a picture of a green suitcase with a luggage label containing the IntelliJ IDEA icon and the text "Luggage tagged. Code secured. JetBrains IDEs", and a black North Face backpack containing a red label with the text "Unlocking productivity", a tag of the IntelliJ IDEA logo, and a tag with Duke, the Java mascot.
On my way to JCON

Java Luminaries Summit

In the afternoon, there was a Java Luminaries Summit @ JCON Europe, where folks active in the Java community discuss topics relevant to the language and ecosystem. This includes Java Champions, JUG leaders, speakers and other active members from the community, like Sharat Chander, Ana-Maria Mihalceanu, Andres Almiray, Brian Vermeer, Cay Horstmann, Kevin Wittek, Kevin Dubois and many more. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the whole summit, as I had some work to do first.

After the summit, there was a pizza session, which was a great opportunity to socialize with other speakers, like Tim te Beek and Rick Ossendrijver, and community members. Also, I got to see my colleague Marcin Mycek and introduce him to some people.

JCON conference day 1

On Tuesday morning, we first prepared our session. Even though we have done this talk before, we always update it to the latest Java version and make small tweaks to continuously improve it.

For lunch, I met with Annelore Egger, François Martin and two of his colleagues.

Social Media post by François Martin about lunch at JCON, including a picture with Annelore Egger, François Martin, Marit van Dijk and Tamar Gogebashvili at a lunch table.
Lunch at JCON

Before the conference, we also had the opportunity to sign up for interviews with Baruch Sodogursky which were livestreamed on YouTube.

During his interview, Piotr Przybył talked about our talk:

Baruch and I had a lovely conversation about reading code in the age of AI:

This is a topic dear to my heart, as I have been talking about Reading Code for a while — and I still think it’s important no matter who has “written” the code.

In the afternoon it was time for our first talk of the week.

Piotr Przybył and Marit van Dijk simultaneously putting on their labcoat.
Synchronous putting-on-labcoat (photo by Dimitris Doutsiopoulos)
Piotr Przybył and Marit van Dijk simultaneously putting a pen in the front pocket of their labcoat.
Synchronous putting-pen-in-pocket (photo by Dimitris Doutsiopoulos)

Giving this talk is a lot of fun. It was very nice to have people come up to us afterwards to tell us how much they liked it. (Special thanks to JavaCro organiser Branko Mihaljević for all your kind words!)

Fortunately, I also had some time to catch up with more people, like Sandra Parsick, Sandra Ahlgrimm, and several others.

JCON speaker dinner

In the evening, it was time for the speaker dinner.

Marit van Dijk making a heart at photographer Dimitris Doutsiopoulos
When you see Dimitris (photo by Dimitris Doutsiopoulos)

Earlier during the day, I had run into my friend Rien Korstanje, who I hadn’t seen in a while. We know each other from when I used to contribute to cucumber-jvm, as he is one of the core maintainers. Turns out is now also a maintainer for JUnit, so we had some time to catch up during dinner with Marc Philipp and Christian Stein (thanks for laughing at all my silly jokes!).

Unfortunately there was not enough time to properly catch up with everyone.

Social media post by Catherine Edelveis with the text "Caught Marit van Dijk for 2 minutes" containing a picture of Catherine and Marit.
Seeing Catherine (too) briefly at the JCON speaker dinner

Devoxx France

On Wednesday, it was time to travel to Paris. We took the train and through sheer luck ended up with seats next to each other, even though we had booked through our respective employers. This gave us time to reflect on how the talk went at JCON and prepare for our session at Devoxx France in the afternoon.

After surviving the Paris metro, the first person we saw at Devoxx France was Estelle Landry, which was a very happy reunion as I hadn’t seen her since Devoxx Morocco.

Estelle helped us get some lunch, pointed us to the speaker room and got us settled in so we were ready for our session. We also ran into Daniel Garnier-Moiroux in the speaker room.

Our talk was again in the afternoon, and the audience was amazing! This was quite possibly the most engaged audience we have had for this talk, and also the best version of the talk we have done so far.

Social media post by Piotr Przybył with the text: "Thank you for being such a vivid and welcoming audience, Devoxx France. And now, with Marit van Dijk: FROMAGE !". The post contains a picture of Marit van Dijk and Piotr Przybył, both wearing labcoats, on stage at Devoxx France with the audience in the background.
Taking a selfie at Devoxx France: Fromage!

It seems we were not the only ones who thought so, because we also received the highest rating for our talk so far: 4.92/5. In addion, we received some very nice feedback like “You make an awesome team” and “Very funny”.

Talk ratings from the Devoxx Mobile app for Learning modern Java the playful way. With 235 hearts, 24 ratings and 5 comments, the average rating is 4,92/5.
A 4.92/5 rating at Devoxx France

Unfortunately, the video is not available yet, but it should be added to the Devoxx France YouTube channel soon. And photos will be added to the Devoxx France Flickr albums.

In the evening, it was again time for the speaker dinner, where I had the opportunity to catch up with people like José Paumard, Zineb Bendhiba, and several others… We didn’t stay too late, as we had an early start to travel to Athens the next day.

Devoxx Greece

We met up early in the morning to take the train to the airport and fly to Athens. Upon arrival, we took a taxi to the venue to figure out the logistics for our talk the next day.

In the evening, there was a speaker reception where we got to meet some of the other speakers, including Viktor Gamov, Alina Yurenko, Alexander Chatzizacharias, Holly Cummins and Patrick Baumgartner. An added bonus for me was the opportunity to catch up with my colleague Michelle Frost, who I don’t get to see that often.

The next morning we met up at the venue for our talk. It was once again time to put on a labcoat 😉

Black and white photo of Marit van Dijk putting on her labcoat over a Java Champion polo.
Putting on the labcoat at Devoxx Greece (photo by Dimitris Doutsiopoulos)

We were a little rushed, as the talk slots were slightly shorter. But it seems that our talk was again well received; we received nice ratings (4,78/5) and lovely feedback. Special thanks to the person who came up to talk to me in Dutch and the folks who came up to us when we were taking pictures to tell us that ours was their favorite session!

We did a short interview for Devoxx Greece and recorded a short video ourselves with the help of Alina Yurenko (thanks!).

Social media post by Alina Yurenko with the text: "Working a double shift as a personal media team for some speakers!!!🙄😄" tagging Marit van Dijk, Piotr Przybył and Devoxx Greece. The post contains a selfie of Alina Yurenko. Marit van Dijk and Piotr Przybył are standing in the background in front of a Devoxx Greece banner; both are wearing a white labcoat.
Alina Yurenko as our personal media team
Marit van Dijk and Piotr Przybył in front of a Devoxx Greece banner; both are wearing a white labcoat.
At Devoxx Greece (photo by Dimitris Doutsiopoulos)

In the afternoon, I had some time to catch up with people, had to take a meeting (is it even remote work if you don’t work from various weird places like conferences, trains, airports and hotel lobbies?) and then it was time to head home.

A great week

Overall, I had a great week. It was wonderful to see so many friends and meet new people. Many thanks to the conference organisers, volunteers and attendees at JCON, Devoxx France and Devoxx Greece and of course my amazing cospeaker Piotr Przybył.

Links

Voxxed Days Amsterdam 2026: An absolute blast!

Just over two weeks ago, I was at Voxxed Days Amsterdam. This was the second edition of the conference, and this year it was two days instead of one!

Day 1: Wednesday, April 1

Opening the day

As a member of the Program Committee, I got to open day 1 together with Michel Schudel. During the opening we introduced the speakers, the program committee, and the community reviewers. This year we had around 650 proposals, and some of us (including myself) reviewed each and every one of them! We also remind people to use the app to rate the talks, as that helps both speakers and organisers to know how talks are received. We use this information to improve our talks and the program!

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Like last year, we had rotating keynotes; which meant that the keynote speakers would do their keynote twice (once in each room) rather than have an overflow room where people watch the keynotes on a screen. One of the keynotes on day 1 was Baruch Sadogursky‘s Never Trust a Monkey! Can We Trust AI-Generated Code? Baruch’s takes are always interesting, so I’d recommend checking it out.

Speaking with Piotr Przybył about modern Java

Right after the opening, it was time for Piotr Przybył and I to take the stage. We present our talk Learning modern Java the playful way, which we updated for Java 26. During this talk we show you how to update Java code from Java 8-11 to modern Java, using some of our favorite new Java language features, including Records, Stream Gatherers, Structured Concurrency, and for the Java 26 version we also added Lazy Constants. We do so using a demo application, and of course some silly jokes!

We aim for the session to be educational and entertaining. Fortunately, someone who attended our session stopped by to tell us that was exactly what they thought of our session, just as we were taking pictures for a social media post.

Foojay podcast

Frank Delporte was back again this year to interview speakers for the Friends of OpenJDK (Foojay.io) podcast. We discussed some topics dear to my heart: Java and reading code.

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You can catch all of the interviews below:

Other talks

During the day I also managed to catch a few other sessions:

10 Things I Hate About Java by Adele Carpenter

Adele is an amazing speaker, and this talk was no exception. I’d been wanting to see this talk ever since I first heard about it! In this talk, Adele goes over some of the decisions that were made during the design of the language, and how those resulted in some of the features that Java has (or doesn’t have). The talk was well-researched and the delivery was amazing. The title of the talk refers to the movie title “10 things I hate about you”. Adele ended the talk with a poem about Java, similar to the one Julia Stiles recites during the movie, and it was brilliant!

Building AI Agents with Spring & MCP by James Ward and Josh Long

It is always fun to see what Josh and James are up to with Spring and AI. Even if you’ve seen them before, they are always entertaining. And in this session they also briefly mentioned Mellum by JetBrains.

What Sorcery is This? How software uses Dark Patterns to manipulate users by Rachel Appel

Another talk I’d been wanting to see for a while. Even though Rachel is my colleague, we don’t usually go to the same conferences, as we are in different ecosystems. Rachel showed how easy it is to manipulate users through software design, with some absolutely appalling examples of dark patterns. This talk is a good reminder of the responsibility we have as developers.

Language Games by Eli Holderness

This talk combines philosophy, language and communication in a way I cannot reproduce; you’ll just have to watch it yourself! Due to technical difficulties, Eli’s slides were not always shown properly. They managed to work around that quite well by describing the image that should have been displayed. It was a master class in communication.

Despite being able to catch some talks, there were also many I missed. For example, my other colleague Anton Arhipov was speaking at the same time as Rachel. And, as much as I would like to, unfortunately I still haven’t managed to clone myself so I can attend multiple sessions at the same time… 😔

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Also, there is more to do on a conference day than attending talks; I also had regular work to do in between, like writing the Featured Content for Java Annotated Monthly that was about to be published.

Day 2: Thursday, April 2

Opening the day

On day 2, I opened the conference together with Ko Turk. Again we introduced the speakers, program committee and community reviewers, and I got to announce Iulia Feroli 🤩 as one of the keynote speakers. Her keynote Building my own (accurate!) Spotify Wrapped was a good way to start the day.

In fact, her keynote inspired Devoxx founder Stephan Janssen to add a Devoxx wrapped to the Devoxx Mobile companion app.

Other talks

On the second day, I didn’t manage to catch so many talks, as I also had other things to do. But the ones I did see were again very good!

How I built my own Intelligent Robot Arm from Scratch by Iulia Feroli

In addition to her keynote, Iulia gave a talk about her physical AI adventures, bringing real hardware on stage. This was a very inspiring session; I am always amazed with how creative some people are in ways that are different from myself.

Iulia is definitely someone to watch! You can follow her YouTube channel Back to Engineering if you want to learn more.

5.5 prompt injection techniques in 15 minutes by Brian Vermeer

A last minute addition to the program (we are lucky to have so many great speakers in the Netherlands!), Brian talks about some much needed security awareness in the age of AI.

Hallway track

And of course, some of the best parts of a conference happen in the hallway. It was great to catch up with friends and meet new people across both days. Among other things, I had a great conversation with Ronald Dehuysser about what working as a Developer Advocate looks like (spoiler: it’s more than speaking at conferences!). One of the things I like about this job is speaking to our users, getting their feedback and seeing how we can help them better. Ronald happened to have some relevant feedback that we discussed.

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Thanks!

Many thanks to everyone who helped make this such a great event: the speakers for their great sessions, volunteers for helping out, sponsors for making this possible and of course all the attendees! 

All recordings are available in the playlist on YouTube. 

Photos by Dimitris Doutsiopoulos 🫶 are available for day 1 and day 2.

All photos in this post (except for screenshots) by Dimitris Doutsiopoulos.

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Voxxed Days Zürich 2026: Another great event!

Almost three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking at Voxxed Days Zürich. This was my third time at this conference, and also my third Swiss Voxxed Days this year (which will be relevant later!).

Speaker dinner

The speaker dinner the evening before the conference is always a good time to catch up with friends and meet other speakers. Good food and drinks are a bonus.  

Because the restaurant was a little loud (maybe because it was filled with speakers…), some of us ended up outside.

Photographer Dimitris Doutsiopoulos took advantage of this to take some beautiful pictures, like this one of Paco van Beckhoven and me, which my colleague Jason Torres pointed out looks like a still from a movie. (It does, doesn’t it?)

Welcome

The conference day started with a welcome by Federico Yankelevich and Patrick Baumgartner.

Patrick created a beautiful animation for this year’s edition. And I have to say I am rather partial to these colors. They even got the steps of the cinema to match!

During the session they called out the Voxxed Days Switzerland Champions. Apparently I was one of six speakers who spoke at all three Swiss Voxxed Days conferences: Voxxed Days Ticino, Voxxed Days CERN and Voxxed Days Zürich. As I am a sucker for vanity metrics, I really appreciated this callout. 😂

Speaking with Andres Almiray about Maven

At Voxxed Days Zürich this year, I had the pleasure to do a new(ish) talk with Andres Almiray: “Getting more out of Maven”. This was only the second time we did this talk (the first time was at JavaLand). Unfortunately we had some trouble connecting my macbook to the screen, which threw us off a little…

During the talk we discussed several tips for using Maven in IntelliJ IDEA. We showed using the Maven wrapper to increase reproducibility of the build, and the enforcer plugin to see where your build breaks. We explained Maven lifecycle and goals, as well as how inheritance works, and more. And of course, we showed some useful IntelliJ IDEA features for working with Maven and dependency management, the dependency analyzer to find conflicts in dependencies, inspections to show you when dependencies have known vulnerabilities and finally the Vulnerable API inspection which can show you whether you are actually using the vulnerable API of a known vulnerability. 

And of course, our session also included some custom memes that we created for this talk. If you want to see all the memes, you can find them in this repo.

Despite the initial technical trouble, overall our session went well. We got some positive feedback, and I had a nice conversation later with some of the attendees about the topic of our talk.

Other talks

During the day I managed to catch the following talks:

Agentic AI Patterns by Kevin Dubois and Mario Fusco

This was a great talk to stay up to date with everything AI. Kevin and Marco did also have some technical trouble, when there was some interference with audio from another room, which was quickly fixes by the conference.

Are We Ready For The Next Cyber Security Crisis Like Log4Shell? by Soroosh Khodami

Soroosh showed us how easy it can be to get compromised and different ways to prevent this.

Supercharge your JVM performance with Project Leyden and Spring Boot by Moritz Halbritter

Moritz showed us how Project Leyden can help you speed up your Spring Boot applications. Mandatory watching for anyone using Java and Spring Boot!

Hallway track

And I also managed to take advantage of the hallway track, again to catch up with people. 

Thanks!

Many thanks to Federico Yankelevich, Patrick Baumgartner and team for organizing another great event! I hope to be back again in the future.

You can find the Voxxed Days Zürich photo album here and the playlist here.

Credit

All photos on this page by Dimitris Doutsiopoulos. 🫶

Tips and tricks to use Java 25 in IntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ IDEA supports new Java versions from day one. Several features were added to make working with Java 25 language features in IntelliJ IDEA easier.

New project

Create a new project in IntelliJ IDEA.

You can use the New Project Wizard to create a new project in IntelliJ IDEA. If you select the option to Add sample code, IntelliJ IDEA will add sample code to your project, containing a class with a main method.

If you select IntelliJ as your Build system, set JDK to 25, the sample code will be a compact source file and instance main method, introduced in Java 25.

Compact source file

Create a compact source file in IntelliJ IDEA.

Compact source files were introduced in Java 25. To create a compact source file, right-click the Project tool window (or press ⌘N (macOS) / Alt+Ins (Windows/Linux)) and select New | Java Class. In the New Java Class popup, select the option Compact source file.

This compact source file is created in the root directory of your project, even if you create it from another package. IntelliJ IDEA automatically adds an instance main method void main() to the file.

Java Compact File

Create a compact source file in IntelliJ IDEA.

To create a Java Compact File, introduced in Java 25, right-click the src/main/java directory in the Project tool window and select New | Java Compact File. IntelliJ IDEA will provide a default name for the file, so your thought process is not disrupted when you want to quickly try something out. IntelliJ IDEA automatically adds an instance main method void main() to the file.

Convert compact source file to class

Convert a compact source file to a class in IntelliJ IDEA.

Java 25 introduced the concept of implicit classes or compact source files. We can convert an implicit class to a regular class as needed. Invoke Context Actions by pressing ⌥⏎ (macOS) / Alt+Enter (Windows/Linux) and select Convert an implicitly declared class of a compact source file into a regular class.

The reverse is also possible, should you prefer to use an implicit class at any point. To do so, use the quick-fix Convert into compact source file.

New live templates for main methods

Create an instance main method using a live template.

IntelliJ IDEA has some new live templates to add a main method to an implicit class, either with or without arguments: main, maina, psvm, psvma. Using the live templates psvm or main inside a compact source file will add the new main method, while they will continue to add the classic main method inside a class, as you can see in the preview.

Add arguments

Add args to your main method.

The new void main() method, introduced in Java 25, does not need String[] args. However, should you decide to use the args in your code, IntelliJ IDEA will help you by also adding them to the main method. Type args and press ⏎ (macOS) / Enter (Windows/Linux) to select args from code completion.

Live templates for simple IO

Add simple IO methods using live templates.

Java 25 introduces simple IO methods, such as IO.println() and readln() to make interacting with the console more convenient. IntelliJ IDEA introduces two new live templates to use these methods: iop for println() and ior for readln().

In addition, there are quick-fixes available to convert IO.println() to System.out.println(), and vice versa. Invoke Context Actions ⌥⏎ (macOS) / Alt+Enter (Windows/Linux) on the method and select the option Replace with System.out.println() or Replace with IO.println().

Add static import for simple IO

Add a static import for simple IO methods.

Java 25 introduces simple IO methods, such as IO.println() and readln() to make interacting with the console more convenient. To use these methods in a compact source file, you don’t need to add an import. However, you can add a static import the java.lang.IO class if you prefer. Invoke Context Actions ⌥⏎ (macOS) / Alt+Enter (Windows/Linux) on the method and select the option Add on-demand static import for java.lang.io.

Module Import

Using module import in IntelliJ IDEA.

Java 25 introduces module imports. When adding a module import, use Jump Down to see the contents of the module. When using Optimized Imports, IntelliJ IDEA will automatically remove any imports that are added by the module import. If you prefer to use single class imports, invoke Context Actions ⌥⏎ (macOS) / Alt+Enter (Windows/Linux) and select Replace with single class imports.

If desired, it is possible to delete unused module imports when using Optimized Imports. To configure this option, open Settings | Editor | Code Style | Java and go to the Imports tab. Select the option Delete unused module imports. When this option is selected, Optimized Imports will remove unused module imports.

Delete unused module imports

Conclusion

Support for Java language features in IntelliJ IDEA makes it easy to adopt and work with new Java language versions.

What’s New In IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1

In this video, Marco Behler, Anton Arhipov, Siva Prasad Reddy K and I show you what’s new in the IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 release.

Chapters

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 00:43 AI updates
  • 11:00 Support for JavaScript and TypeScript without an Ultimate subscription
  • 14:00 Java 26 support
  • 18:18 Command completion updates and tips & tricks
  • 24:00 Debugger improvements
  • 26:25 Git worktrees
  • 30:50 Spring Data improvements
  • 34:47 Spring Debugger
  • 42:07 Better Kotlin Spring Routing DSL & Bean Registrar support
  • 47:54 Improvements for Kotlin development with JPA
  • 53:34 New Kotlin language features
  • 58:34 Gradle best practicies
  • 1:02:04 Streamlined Kubernetes workflows

Links

AI

Unified distro: JavaScript/TypeScript

Java 26

Spring data improvements

Spring debugger improvements

Kotlin

Gradle best practices

Creating your first Java application with IntelliJ IDEA

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create and run a simple Java application that prints Hello, World! to the system output. Along the way, you will get familiar with IntelliJ IDEA features for boosting your productivity as a developer: coding assistance and supplementary tools.

  • 0:16 Create a new Java project in IntelliJ IDEA
  • 2:08 Write a Hello World program in Java 25
  • 3:33 Run your first Java application
  • 5:19 Expand your Hello World program in Java 25
  • 8:45 Write a Hello World program with older Java versions

Links

Command completion: IntelliJ IDEA with less shortcuts

How many shortcuts can you remember? Three? Five? More? I try to learn as many as I can and still forget some of them…

What if you could unlock IntelliJ IDEA features, without having to remember shortcuts? You can still use shortcuts if you want. But you don’t have to.

Command completion (..) is a new feature in IntelliJ IDEA that lets you discover and execute IDE actions right from your editor. 

Command completion extends regular completion

Command completion is an extension of regular code completion – something every developer already uses. For example, when you have a variable, you can type a dot to show you completion options. It will show you API completion (all of the methods you can call on this variable), and postfix completion (templates you can apply to this variable). The list now also includes commands; all relevant commands for your current context. Code completion (a single dot) is now a universal entry point for all relevant actions.

To filter the list to show commands only, type two dots ... As the list can be quite long, the list is searchable, so you can type part of the command you want to use. 

Command completion extends regular completion

By default, the commands are shown in a separate section of the list. If you prefer Commands to be part of the regular completion list, you can adjust this in the Settings. Use Search Everywhere (Shift Shift) and look for “command completion” to go straight to the relevant settings and uncheck the option Show command completion as a separate group.

Command Completion Settings: Show command completion as a separate group

Fix errors and warnings with command completion

You can use this new feature to fix errors and warnings in your code. If you write code that doesn’t compile, IntelliJ IDEA will tell you. You can navigate to the error using F2 and press Alt+Enter to show context actions. However, Alt+Enter gives you only a few options; it is designed to give you the most relevant fixes to your problem. That means it might not always include the action you want to perform. On the other hand, command completion (..) offers you all actions that are relevant in your current context. IntelliJ IDEA will give you a preview of what each command will do.

Fix errors and warnings

Perform file- or class-level actions

It is now possible to unlock this type of completion in places where it wasn’t available before, like on a blank line. Typing a dot on a blank line now shows you file-level actions, like Reformat Code or Optimize Imports. For example, use Optimize Imports to remove an import statement that is no longer needed. 

Perform file or class level actions

Refactoring and code transformation

Command completion can also help you when refactoring or transforming your code. When writing code, you can use it to keep moving forward. For example, to create classes, methods and fields.

Keep moving forward and create classes, methods and fields

You can use it to generate code for you, such as a toString() method.

You can transform your code as you go, for example to make use of modern Java language features. For example, you can refactor a class into a record, using only command completion.

Transform code

Use command completion for navigation

You can use it for navigation. For example, we can navigate to the String class declaration. You’ll notice that this file is read only! How will we use completion here? Don’t worry, you can change your settings to be able to use command completion in read-only files!

Open the Settings for Command Completion, by using Search Everywhere (Shift Shift) and searching for “command completion”. Select the option Enable command completion for read only files. Now, you can use command completion in read-only files, for example to navigate back to where you were.

Command Completion Settings: Enable command completion for read only files.

If you want to rename your class, you can use a shortcut to do so, but you need to know this shortcut (⇧F6 on macOS / Shift+F6 on Windows/Linux). Now, you can use command completion instead. Go to the end of the class or method name you want to rename and type ..rename.

Aliases for several commands

In some cases, you don’t even need to know the exact name of the command you’re looking for, as some commands have aliases. For example, you can also use ..change name instead of ..rename.

Aliases

This makes features even more discoverable; you don’t need to remember the exact name of the feature.

Complements existing features

You can still use existing shortcuts, postfix completion and live templates. Command completion is intended to complement existing features.

Imagine we declare a new instance of a class Person. To assign this new Person() to a variable, you can use the shortcut to Extract Variable (⌥⌘V on macOS / Ctrl+Alt+V on  Windows/Linux). But this requires you to know this feature exists and the relevant shortcut.

Alternatively you could use postfix completion .var to create a variable. But that would again require you to know (or quickly be able to find) this specific postfix completion.

Instead, you can now use command completion to introduce a local variable. After the declaration of the new instance, use ..Introduce local variable.

Command completion complements existing features

If you want, you can still use postfix completion. For example, you type person.sout to print variable person to System.out:  System.out.println(person);.

You can transform this code to modern Java and use features introduced in Java 25, like simple IO. After the line System.out.println(person); type .. and select ..Replace with IO.println().

You can use refactoring, like Extract Method (⌥⌘M on macOS / Ctrl+Alt+M on Windows/Linux), even if you don’t remember the shortcut. To do so, type .. and select ..Extract method after the method you want to extract.

Refactor: Extract method

What if you want to add JavaDoc to your code? You could use Alt+Enter to Add JavaDoc. But now you can also use command completion to generate JavaDoc, and convert it to Markdown.

Command completion is as easy as adding a dot, or two..

As you can see, using command completion is as easy as adding a dot, or two..

Conclusion

Command completion extends regular completion – which you already use. It lets you discover and use IntelliJ IDEA features without having to remember shortcuts. This keeps you in the flow of coding; you can think about what you want to do, instead of how to do it.

Type a . to find commands as part of regular completion, or .. to see all available commands relevant to your current context.  You might discover powerful features you never knew were there!

What’s New in IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3


In this video, Marco Behler, Anton Arhipov, Siva Prasad Reddy K and I show you what’s new in the IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3 release.

Chapters

Links

What’s New in IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

In this video, Marco Behler, Anton Arhipov and I show you what’s new in the IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2 release.

Chapters

  • 0:00 – Introduction
  • 0:50 – AI updates: Junie’s MCP support and other updates.
  • 7:09 – Java 25: Support for the latest Java features.
  • 14:31 – Virtual threads: Improved debugging support.
  • 22:33 – JSpecify: Support for the new nullability standard.
  • 28:09 – Spring Debugger: The most exciting feature for Spring Boot devs!
  • 36:10 – Spring Modulith: Support for clean architectures.
  • 41:01 – Spring + Kotlin: Improvements and ongoing collaboration.
  • 44:16 – Kotlin Notebook: Enhanced REPL for seamless interactive coding.
  • 54:14 – Maven 4: Support for the upcoming major release.
  • 1:03:28 – Universal entry point: No need for keyboard shortcuts.
  • 1:12:17 – Single unified distribution: No more Ultimate and Community editions.

Links