IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 Early Access Program is now open!

JetBrains announced on Wednesday that they’re starting an Early Access Program (EAP) for their popular IDE IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3. The IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP explores features such as better IDE navigation, revamped plugin preferences page, Run Anything, and multiline TODO comments among others.

You can download the IntelliJ IDEA 2019.3 EAP with the help of Toolbox App.

Let’s discuss the key features in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP.

Better IDE navigation

The IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 offers better IDE navigation with an all-new Search Everywhere dialog. The new search dialog has an enhanced UI which is resizable and movable. It comprises of Go to class, Go to file, Go to symbol, and Find action. This new feature has made the search process faster.

Run Anything dialog

There’s a new Run Anything action in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3. Run Anything lets you run a command in the IDE, launch any run configuration, and run any terminal commands.

This dialog allows you to select a recent command, a preconfigured run configuration and reopen recent projects.

With the Run Anything dialog, you can hold down the Shift key to switch to the Debug Anything mode, which allows you to run a debug configuration.

Multiline TODO comments

There’s an added support for multiline TODO comments in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP. Earlier, only the first line of a multiline TODO comment was handled as a todo comment. Now, the first line along with all the other todo comment lines can be highlighted in the editor and listed in the TODO Tool Window.

Plugins page

Now there’s a new Plugins page in Preferences/Settings, making it easier to manage, install, uninstall, and update plugins. You can now search for plugins by name or tags, and sort the results by downloads, name, rating, featured, or updates. Additionally, you can also view the new and updated plugins, top downloaded plugins, as well as top-rated plugins.

Installed Tab allows you to check all the downloaded and bundled plugins in different areas. You can view all the plugins that need to be updated in the Updates tab.

Structural Search

There’s a new simplified Structural Search & Replace dialogs in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3. Structural Search comes with a drop-down menu under the search icon to display the search history. There’s also a Scope configuration which is easier and more flexible.

Editing variables/filters is possible with the help of Structural Search & Replace dialogs. The Edit Variables dialog is replaced by a Filters panel.

JVM Debugger

IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 comes packed with various debugger improvements. You can now see all the available processes for attaching in the “Attach with Java Debugger To” action list. Now, there’s a new Auto restart option for the remote debug configurations so the IDE can automatically restart a configuration while debugging a remote process.

Maven

You can now delegate all your build and run actions to Maven in IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3. To enable the new option, delegate the IDE build/run actions to maven, by going to Preferences / Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Build Tools | Maven | Runner.

Editor

There’s now a way to configure the default indent in projects on the Tabs and Indents tab in Preferences / Settings | Editor | Code Style | Java.

There’s also a newly added status bar indicator which points out if the current file indentation differs from the project’s default. To choose actions that control the current indentation, there’s a status bar popup.

Java

There are a lot of new Java inspections and quick-fixes in the IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP.

The inspection support for Java Stream API has been improved. IntelliJ IDEA is now capable of detecting cases where redundant sorted calls are made before the subsequent min call. You can quickly remove the unnecessary sorted call with the new IDE.

You can convert streams into loops when the downstream collector is collection-based (toSet/toList/toMap/toCollection/groupingBy) and can be processed by itself. Also, to completely remove static import, use * and add qualifiers to the usages in the code instead.

Run Configurations

There’s an added support for macros in run configurations. Currently, the IDE supports only the “Application” and “npm” run configurations.

You can use text/log file as input by enabling the Redirect input in the Run/Debug Configurations dialog, After this, simply specify the path to the file which has the input data.

Version Control

Earlier, the IDE only showed file history up to the selected commit. With InteliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP, it can now display the full history. You simply need to switch “Show All Branches” on the toolbar. This step is particularly useful in case the file gets deleted later.

Other than that, you can now ignore the whitespace changes while merging with a new ignore Whitespaces option. It also comes with a new Ignore drop-down menu with options to hide or trim whitespace changes that occur on merge. You can also copy a file easily from one Git branch to another.

For more information, check out the official IntelliJ IDEA 2018.3 EAP documentation.