IDEA 2023.1 officially released, introduction to new features

Last night, I saw IDEA's official push announcing that IntelliJ IDEA 2023.1 was officially released. After a brief look, I found that this new version contains many improvements, further optimizing the user experience and improving convenience.

As for whether to upgrade to the latest version, it is entirely a personal choice. If you feel that the new version has no improvements that interest you, you don't need to upgrade at all, and the impact will be small. The version iteration of the software is very normal, just look at it correctly, and it will be gradually eliminated if it does not continue to improve!

According to the official introduction:

IntelliJ IDEA 2023.1 has been extensively refactored for the new user interface, and these improvements were implemented based on the valuable feedback received. Official performance enhancements have also been implemented, making Maven imports faster and IDE features available earlier when opening projects. The new version offers a simplified commit process thanks to background commit checks. IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate now supports Spring Security matchers and request map navigation.

The following is a detailed introduction to some of the more interesting improvements in this version.

New UI enhancements (beta)

In response to the feedback received about the IDE's new user interface, IntelliJ IDEA officially implemented some updates to address the most popular requests. Compact mode has been introduced to provide a more focused IDE look and feel by shrinking spacing and elements. The new UI now provides an option to split the tool window area vertically and arrange windows conveniently, just like the old UI. The Run widget in the title bar of the main window has been redesigned to make it unobtrusive and easier to see.

Provide IDE functionality earlier when project is opened

IntelliJ IDEA officially improves the IDE startup experience by performing the process of scanning files for indexing in smart mode, which makes the full functionality of the IDE available earlier in the startup process. When opening a project, IntelliJ IDEA 2023.1 uses the cache that existed in the last session with the project and simultaneously looks for files to index. If no changes are found in the scan, the IDE will be ready, eliminating the previous delay caused by indexing at startup.

Import Maven projects faster

The official has significantly improved the performance of the IDE when importing Maven projects by optimizing dependency resolution and redesigning the process of importing and configuring facets.

background submission check

Officially redesigned the commit checking behavior of Git and Mercurial to speed up the entire commit process. Checks are now performed in the background before committing but not yet pushing.

Navigation of Spring Security matchers and request mappings

To simplify viewing application security rules, IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate 2023.1 provides easy navigation from Spring controllers to security matchers. This navigation works from the security matcher to the controller and vice versa.

Full IDE scaling

In v2023.1, the IDE can be fully zoomed in and out, increasing or reducing the size of all UI elements at the same time. From the main menu, select View | Appearance to adjust the IDE's scaling. Additionally, you can specify custom shortcut keys to invoke these actions in Settings/Preferences | Keymap | Main Menu | View | Appearance .

New Java inspection

To help keep the code clean and error-free, some existing Java inspections have been upgraded and new inspections have been added. Malformed string checking now reports illegal time conversions that do not conform to common Java syntax. Redundant string manipulation checks now detect redundant StringBuilder.toString() calls and provide a quick fix to replace them with contentEquals() so you don't create intermediate String objects. It also reports unnecessary parameters in String constructor calls and suggests a quick fix to remove them. Learn more about other code inspection improvements in IntelliJ IDEA 2023.1 in this blog post.

Java 20 support

Continuing to reduce the cognitive load for Java developers, IntelliJ IDEA 2023.1 supports the latest updates added to Java 20, including changes to language features pattern matching and logging patterns.

Improved Extract Method refactoring

Officially upgraded the extract method refactoring by introducing an option that can be applied even if the selected code snippet has multiple variables that need to be returned. In these cases, the IDE first suggests wrapping these variables into a new record or bean class, and then performs method extraction.

Autocompletion in the VM Options field

Autocompletion and integration into the VM Options field of the Run/Debug configuration popup . Now, when typing the name of a flag, the IDE suggests a list of available command line options. This works for and options, as well as some standard options that are not automatically configured by IntelliJ IDEA, such as , but not for or .-XX:-X-ea-cp–release

Spring Security 6 support

IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate 2023.1 provides updated support for navigating to URL mappings and security roles for APIs introduced in Spring Security 6.

Apache Dubbo support

IntelliJ IDEA implements a new dedicated plugin that integrates Apache Dubbo, bringing the framework's functionality as part of IntelliJ IDEA's support for Spring.

VCS status color hints in the Structure tool window

Improved code review workflow for GitHub

To simplify the process of reviewing code in the IDE, the Pull Request tool window has been reworked. It now has a dedicated tab for each pull request you open. Tabs immediately show a list of changed files, but it provides less information than before, allowing you to better focus on the task at hand. Now it's easy to perform the most relevant action for the pull request's current state through a new dedicated button.