Last summer we held our third annual two-day hackathon, an event where anyone and everyone from JetBrains (as well as a few external contributors) gathered to work on a novel, high-impact idea.
The JetBrains App Launcher was one of these Hackathon projects. The idea behind the project was to simplify the process of installing, updating and uninstalling different JetBrains desktop tools.
After the Hackathon was over, the team continued to improve and enhance the application as part of the 20% project we have at JetBrains. Close to the end of 2015 it was released internally and was given the official name of JetBrains Toolbox App. The app was well received and somehow pushed us to refine the experience even more.
Today we’re excited to open up the Early Access Program (EAP) for JetBrains Toolbox App and invite you to try it out for yourself.
Managing Products
On November 2, 2015, JetBrains introduced a new subscription model called JetBrains Toolbox and opened wider access to all its developer tools with its new ‘All Products’ plan. Being subscribed to ‘All Products’ means you can decide which JetBrains tools to use for a particular project or task. You can also switch from one tool to another at any time. JetBrains Toolbox desktop application helps you manage all these developer tools.
You can use the JetBrains Toolbox App to perform the following actions:
- Download and install a new product
- Update an installed product (or all products at once) to a newer version
- Rollback to a previous product version
- Uninstall a product
These actions are also available for Early Access Programs (EAPs).
Focusing on Projects
JetBrains Toolbox App lists all projects you’re working on in one place, even if you use different tools and IDEs for them. It lets you focus on the project itself, rather than answering questions such as, “Did I work on this in IntelliJ IDEA or in WebStorm?”
Interacting from GitHub
JetBrains Toolbox App also offers a Google Chrome extension which allows you to check out GitHub projects and open them in your IDE in a single click.
We’re anxious to hear your feedback about JetBrains Toolbox App in our issue tracker, as well as on Twitter @JBToolbox. There’s also a FAQ and more detailed information available.
The Toolbox App is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
This is great but I have one problem…How tell toolbox that we already have IntelliJ and set location of this? I don’t have to download IJ again
Artur, you can wait for the next update of IJ and then install the EAP/update using Toolbox or re-install it now. If it’s still no an option for you, please file an issue here: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/ALL
Cool app. Unfortunately I can not choose whether to run 32 or 64 version of IDE (I want by default 64).
Thank you, vesek. Please vote here https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/ALL-645
The tool says I must install IntelliJ IDEA in order to receive updates.
If I do that, I don’t want to lose all my IDE global settings: how should I proceed?
Go to File -> Export settings. Save the file then, after reinstalling, go to File -> Import settings
No worries, the new version will use your settings. You can make a backup of your settings if you wish https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2016.1/exporting-and-importing-settings.html
Any plans to release its source?
This looks nice, as well as the integration with Chrome and Github. However until I can configure where my IDEs are I can’t use it, sorry.
My use case is simple, I have all of them in HOME and I usually keep latest stable and latest EAP. Usually the folder names are: idea & ideaeap, clion & clioneap, webstorm & webstormeap and so on.
And as other already said, would be useful to have Android Studio integrated as well. If there are issues with AS using an older platform version then maybe a plugin could help out meanwhile?
As an improvement, I would see this as something I can launch after login (I’m on Linux btw) and run in the system tray. Clicking on the icon should launch a nice pop-up message which would be the current interface. What do you think?
Thank you nonetheless for all the work and effort behind this.
Thank you Florin. We’re going to add ability to customize where to install your tool. Please add your vote here https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/ALL-652 to be notified as soon as we finish.
I second the idea about android studio integration.
me too! 😉
Great tool. Thanks.
Some early feedback (Mac, OS X, El Capitan):
– Could not open a project using keyboard (using up/down buttons then hitting ‘enter’)
– After hitting enter could not open a project even using trackpad (need to restart Toolbox)
– Would be great to have scriptable capabilities for Toolbox to write plugin for Alfred on OS X (high priority feature for me)
– Search over tools and run
– Search over projects and open
– If I have two IDEAs installed Chrome Extensions always run Community Edition (in my case) even if want to open the project using Ultimate one
Thanks again. Keep it up.
– Windows version installs into AppData directory of the user. AppData should be for setting, not for installations -> use “Program Files” instead please + the name of the install directory should be customizable
– does not find any version extracted from zips -> manual additions should be possible
– lists all ides (commumity + commercial) -> list should be reducible
One bug (rather than feature) – once I use TooBox to install an app (in this case DataGrip), the app appears at the top of the list but still exists in the un-installed list of apps as well.
I’ll bet one of the most frequent JetBrains combinations is AppCode & Android Studio. Even though I understand the latter isn’t JetBrains-branded, it would be most useful to include it in the Toolbox app
Would it be possible to support clients that are running on networks not connected to the Internet? Would be really nice to point the Toolbox App to a local server to get IDE updates to developers easier in these environments.
Hello John. Thanks for the idea. Could you please create a feature request describing your Network environment and we will discuss it here https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/ALL
Hello, I created a ticket for this: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/ALL-668
Hi guys， Now I use gitlab in the company, and I find the launch url is jetbrains://idea/checkout/git?checkout.repo=git@github.com:linux-china/spring-boot-start-dropwizard-metrics.git&idea.required.plugins.id=Git4Idea. Is it possible to change the url to jetbrains://idea/checkout/git?checkout.repo=git@gitlab.xxxx.com:linux-china/spring-boot-start-dropwizard-metrics.git&idea.required.plugins.id=Git4Idea and make make toolbox app to check out code from gitlab?
I mean, it would work if you add somehow such an url to your gitlab pages.
Official gitlab support in extension is planned anyway.
since I have IJ Ultimate, I pretty much have all the other IDE’s as a plugin. how useful is this toolbox in that case?
I like this app’s look and feel. Is this a java app? I’d love to see the IDEs themselves adopt a more modern look and feel like this (while feeling at home on the host OS and fitting in with the native UI components).
Why does the toolbox install to a non-standard directory? On a Mac, I’d rather it install to the “/Applications” directory instead of in my home directory.
Hi Alex,
we consider making installation directory configurable. Please vote here: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/ALL-652
Awesome tool!
It does not seem to use the system proxy settings (at least on Linux) and I have not found an option for configuring the proxy in the tool. Am I missing something? If the tool does indeed not have support for proxies: Any plans of adding it?
Hi Stefan,
we are currently working on adding support for proxies in Toolbox app. Unfortunately, there is no workaround for this.
Works with sockify:
SOCKS_SERVER=localhost:3128 sockify jetbrains-toolbox
Nope, too quick off the mark to reply. Seemed to start but then timed out.
I like this app very much. However can I suggest the following improvement to the display of the app on Windows. I work in a multi screen monitor environment and the app is displayed and locked to the far right hand side of the main monitor screen. It would be helpful to be able to select the app window and locate it on another monitor screen?
Kind regards,
Paul D
This App is cool. But I have one problem on my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015). When I change my screen resolution, it seems the app doesn’t aware it and I cannot use it normally. I’m using the built-in panel at home and outside, and using DELL U3014 as external display at my office.
Hi! Thanks for reporting it. This is a known issue: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/ALL-651
Please vote for it to follow the progress.
We appreciate the feedback!
All my three monitors goes complete dark when I try to open this application in Ubuntu 14.04. Scary!!
Hi guys,
I like this so far. My only small feedback would be to think about renaming it. I read about this somewhere, but today had the hardest time finding it. Googling “jetbrains toolbox” shows pages of results about the IDE bundle & pricing plans, but nothing about this tool.
JetBrains Manager?
JetBrains Cortex?
The Czech Army Knife?
Something searchable
I have installed my IDES via Homebrew on Mac, the toolbox sees the IDEs and projects, however it states that I must reinstall them via DMGs to be able to receive updates. Why is that? Is there any hope to change this?
I like the toolbox but I would like to have more features so that it is more usable:
a) Add ReSharper – right now I only see the different IDEs but not ReSharper and other included tools. If the toolbox is meant as an upgrade tool, then these products would make sense, too.
b) Access to EAP versions would be great, too. So it might be an easy way to install / upgrade EAP versions. Maybe even including a way to deinstall the EAP version and install the production one or keep them side by side?
Love the idea behind Jetbrains Toolbox.
Only question I have is that I would have expected the Resharper products to be listed when I run on Windows as I have the subscription.
Thank you, Mike. We’re going to support Resharper as well.
Any chance of an up-to-date download link? The link on this page only goes to the older version, which doesn’t always auto-update successfully on Linux.
I had to “guess” the URL for the latest version of the toolbox app
Sure http://jb.gg/toolbox-app
It would be great if I could specify my own JDK globally and install apps without built-in JDK.
This is not traffic or disk space usage problem only. On my Linux boxes (Ubuntu 12.04 ? 16.04) default JDK fonts look crisper than Jetbrains version.
Thank you, Mikhail.
You can set it globally https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2016.1/switching-boot-jdk.html
I like the idea of the chrome plugin – unfortunately
After installing the chrome addon, and browse github, and then click on the “Open in IDE”
I get an error saying: “Failed to find application to Url: jetbrains::/idea/checkout/git …
Hello Paul.
Have you installed IntelliJ IDEA using Toolbox?
I started to see a similar message (for me it is: “Failed to find application to Url:share/jetbrains-toolbox/jetbrains-toolbox”) each time I click in Toolbox since some days ago. I am not sure what triggered it.
I’ve got the same error the first time (after every laptop boot) open toolbox.
In my case, just click OK and reopen toolbox and now it works.
yes, the application works even if I ignore the message. But I would like to get rid of it.
Issue https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/ALL-652 seems to have been closed as a duplicate but there seems to be no resolution to the original issue. Are you still considering the idea of installing the IDE’s in a user defined directory? For us this is a must have feature as our security policies don’t allow developers access to some directories.
Hi Teeru,
thanks for your feedback! We’ve already implemented this feature and it will be available in the next update.
OK great… when is the next update coming up then? Can’t wait to try this on
when is the new release coming up? been a month since your reply?
We’ve just released 1.0 Beta: https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2016/09/29/jetbrains-toolbox-app-1-0-beta-available/
Thanks for your patience!
So, you added, this I said ‘Applications’ and you put an ‘apps’ folder in there instead of the applications as it used to be.
Guess then the next question is – I’ve always lauched webstorm via terminal aka wstorm . This fails now as it’s looking for Applications/Webstorm
Steve, please try re-creating the cmd launcher from the Tools menu of WebStorm.
Hope it helps
** (jetbrains-toolbox:1859): WARNING **: Pixbuf theme: Cannot load pixmap file /usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-2.0/ProgressBar/trough-progressbar.png: Couldn’t recognize the image file format for file ‘/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-2.0/ProgressBar/trough-progressbar.png’
(jetbrains-toolbox:1859): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_get_width: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed
(jetbrains-toolbox:1859): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_get_height: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed
** (jetbrains-toolbox:1859): WARNING **: Invalid borders specified for theme pixmap:
/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-2.0/ProgressBar/trough-progressbar.png,
borders don’t fit within the image
(jetbrains-toolbox:1859): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_get_n_channels: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed
……
……
…..
(jetbrains-toolbox:1859): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_get_height: assertion ‘GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)’ failed
Unable to convert –wait-for-pid argument “” to number
share/jetbrains-toolbox/jetbrains-toolbox: relocation error: /lib64/libssl.so.1.0.1e: symbol OPENSSL_init_library, version libcrypto.so.10 not defined in file libcrypto.so.10 with link time reference
this error is in centos 7.2/rhel 7.2
How can I remove a project from projects list?
That’s a good question, George.
You should open the IDE linked with this project and remove it from here. From Welcome Screen or from File -> Open Recent -> Manage Projects…
However, it would be nice to support it in Toolbox App as well. Could you please file a feature request about it?
when to surport swift language on IDEA for server side development
Hi Gordon,
This does not seem related to this blog post or the Toolbox App, but anyway, we do not have such plans at the moment and we did not see a demand.
Swift editing is currently available in AppCode and CLion.
People reporting a lot of bugs, too bad I won’t download it until ti’s more polished
When I download an IDE via the ToolBox app, it gets installed in my home “Applications” folder on OSX (instead of the global “Applications” folder).
Yes, that’s correct.
How can I logout from my JetBrains account? I want to switch from my free, student account to my paid, grown-person account
I see nothing that is session-related in .Toolbox, .local/share/JetBrains nor gconf, and the app has not logout button.
JetBrains Toolbox 1.0.2095 (Oct 13 2016)
Ubuntu 16.10
So I had to find the right process, attach strace to it, and saved a setting via the app to catch the open/write syscalls to the configuration file.
For anyone who is interested… the setting are simply stored in ~/.local/share/JetBrains/Toolbox/.settings.json … I’m a bit blind sometimes.
@JetBrains: something like ~/.config/JetBains/Toolbox/settings.json would be better
Windows version installs into AppData directory of the user.
AppData should be for setting, not for installations
By default it should use “Program Files” instead
Upon changing install location ,It gives error and reverts back to default
It would be nice to have a choice where to install the toolbox because on Windows, AppData is not a good directory to install applications to.
When i try to change the installation directory I always get an error and the Toolbox reverts to the old location.
Ok the toolbox doesn’t work with the windows program files folder because of access rights to that folder. If the toolbox has admin rights then changing the installation folder works but without admin rights the toolbox then still can’t install (or update) apps to the program files folder.
We consider Toolbox a per user application. The right place for such applications is AppData/Local directory. For example Google Chrome does exactly this in per user install.
Why do you want to change install path? If you want to move installed applications to a different disk use an option inside Toolbox itself. Please share your case
How to uninstall toolbox!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello xu. What OS are you using?
i’m not xu but i wanna know how to uninstall toolbox.
i use mac os 10.12.5(Sierra).
plz tell me.
Привет,подскажите пожалуйста почему не запускается Toolbox в Linux Ubuntu пишет:
Invalid url: ‘/home/bi/Downloads/BioPerl-1.6.0/jetbrains-toolbox-1.1.2143/jetbrains-toolbox’ given, exiting
No ‘:’ in the uri
Could you please provide more details how do you run the app?
How to remove JetBrains Toolbox 1.1.2143 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS？
Just delete ~/.local/share/JetBrains/Toolbox directory.
May I ask you why would you like to remove it?
I’ll tell ya why I ended up here searching for how to remove. I have PHPStorm on two identical Linux systems: one using Toolbox and one not. The one using Toolbox always has problems with updates since I first installed Toolbox several months ago. Now, after using Toolbox to update to 2017.2.1, PHPStorm is unusable–freezes for a minute, then unfreezes for 15 seconds, then back to frozen. Forget it. I’ve wasted far more time trying to get Toolbox to work than I have ever saved over doing manual installs and updates.
Yep. Took me longer to write the above post than to manually download and install the latest PHPStorm. Works just fine. Bottom line for anyone else reaching this page: Uninstall Toolbox and live happily ever after.
I wish it was possible to tell toolbox to install stuff from the command line.
The project build in Community Edition, but I want to open in the Ultimate Edition. When I click the project, always prompt “Failed to find application : PyCharm-C”. What should I do?
Sorry for the inconvenience, it’s a known issue. Please follow here: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/ALL-1181
get!thanks
The slowest application on my office windows workstation. Opening idea takes upwards of 15 min. Forget about update – if it takes more than 30 min, I don’t want to use it!
We are very sorry to hear that. Could you please help us investigate the problem you are experiencing?
Please file an issue to our issue tracker: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/ALL#newissue and attach Toolbox log file.
Hi,
I also wish to remove my fresh installed toolbox, cause my system freezes every time i start more than one project (that is more than one instance of PhpStorm).
I just noticed this does not happen when i start the application (PhpStorm) via terminal.
Does not work on Linux systems with openssl 1.1
Seems to have been fixed with version 1.3, is there a preview versions we can download?
Hi Philip,
we’ve just released version 1.3: https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2017/05/22/jetbrains-toolbox-app-1-3-is-here/
It doesn’t work anymore, is says: “Failed to update feed. Please check internet connection”.
And in the tcpdump output I see an attempt to resolve a domain name like: toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net. But such domain doesn’t exist.
If you no longer support this tool it would be a good idea to remove it from a page with all products and do not mislead your users.
Hi Andrew, the app is not abandoned, we’ve just released version 1.3: https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2017/05/22/jetbrains-toolbox-app-1-3-is-here/
Could you please try it and check if it works for you?
1.3.2421 16651 2017-05-23T18:19:44.024 INFO Started request QUrl(“http://toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net/feeds/v1/internal-feed.feed.xz.signed”)
1.3.2421 16651 2017-05-23T18:19:44.025 INFO DownloadAction::replyError: “Host toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net not found” from: QUrl(“http://toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net/feeds/v1/internal-feed.feed.xz.signed”) error code: QNetworkReply::NetworkError(HostNotFoundError)
1.3.2421 16651 2017-05-23T18:19:44.025 ERROR DownloadAction::replyReadyRead: Error: “Host toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net not found”
1.3.2421 16651 2017-05-23T18:19:44.025 DEBUG “http://toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net/feeds/v1/internal-feed.feed.xz.signed request headers (User-Agent: Toolbox/1.3.2421 (macOS Sierra (10.12); Darwin x86_64), Accept-Encoding: identity, Cache-Control: max-age=10800, must-revalidate) response (”
1.3.2421 16651 2017-05-23T18:19:44.025 DEBUG Finished request QUrl(“http://toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net/feeds/v1/internal-feed.feed.xz.signed”) size: 0
1.3.2421 16651 2017-05-23T18:19:44.025 WARN Unable to download feed from “http://toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net/feeds/v1/internal-feed.feed.xz.signed” “Host toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net not found”
1
Same here, I’m running jetbrains toolbox 1.3 on Windows 7, and toolbox crashes consistently when trying to start it up.
In fact, the toolbox icon appears in the system tray, and then vanishes as soon as I hover it to open the app.
Not sure if related, but when I check the logs, I see the same as you:
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:33:59.959 DEBUG Preloading Release feed from resources
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:33:59.979 INFO DownloadAction::replyError: “Host toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net not found” from: QUrl(“http://toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net/feeds/v1/internal-feed.feed.xz.signed”) error code: QNetworkReply::NetworkError(HostNotFoundError)
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:34:00.033 ERROR DownloadAction::replyReadyRead: Error: “Host toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net not found”
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:34:00.034 DEBUG “http://toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net/feeds/v1/internal-feed.feed.xz.signed request headers (User-Agent: Toolbox/1.3.2421 (Windows 7 SP 1; WinNT x86_64), Accept-Encoding: identity, Cache-Control: max-age=10800, must-revalidate) response (”
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:34:00.032 DEBUG Cert 0 CN: third
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:34:00.035 DEBUG Finished request QUrl(“http://toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net/feeds/v1/internal-feed.feed.xz.signed”) size: 0
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:34:00.119 DEBUG Parsed feed from :/release.feed.xz.signed: feed generation time: 2017-05-17T11:46:35.036Z, includes: 0, items: 63, patches: 0
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:34:00.187 DEBUG Started fetching applications feeds: local
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:34:00.188 DEBUG Detected applications: “D:/java/toolbox/apps” (“IDEA-U”)
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:34:00.191 DEBUG Detected channels: “D:/java/toolbox/apps/IDEA-U” (“ch-0”)
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:34:00.176 WARN Unable to download feed from “http://toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net/feeds/v1/internal-feed.feed.xz.signed” “Host toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net not found”
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:34:00.193 DEBUG Detected builds: “D:/java/toolbox/apps/IDEA-U/ch-0” (“172.1909.2”, “172.2465.6”)
1.3.2421 5140 2017-06-20T10:34:00.250 INFO No previously downloaded content for feed “http://toolbox-internal-feed.labs.intellij.net/feeds/v1/internal-feed.feed.xz.signed”
also got this problem
Homrebrew installation, and CLI? I’d like to include this in new environment setup scripting for new developers. And rebuilding my own environment.
An odd error happened. When I attempted to update from PyCharm 2017.1.3 to PyCharm 2017.1.4 using the toolbox (it showed the ‘update’ button for 2017.1.3), the update did not work. Instead, the tray message that showed up said “Invalid marker file. Failed to complete install.”
I then used the toolbox to uninstall 1.3 which it did. But when I attempted to install 1.4 from the toolbox, the marker file error cropped up again.
I then just downloaded 1.4 from the web site and manually installed it. Now the toolbox shows it as ‘local’ and will only let me uninstall or start it.
Anything I can do to ‘map’ the local install to one automatically managed by the toolbox?
Was able to install 1.3 from the toolbox, then install 1.4 as new from the toolbox, then uninstall 1.3. Everything seems to be playing well together after that.
if I install Packages through toolbox.
and when I unistall the toolbox , It will remove the Packages I installed ….
Say, is there a way to create a command line launcher for the Jetbrains Toolbox on linux? Right now I have to start the app from a terminal and that ties up a terminal session. Would be nice to have a command line launcher just like we have one for the other jetbrains products.
Hi,
I used to open folder with Intellij Idea with a script on mac and with registry shortcup (.reg) on windows.
How can i obtain the current installation path of idea ?
Since i use the toolbox, the path always change on update….
Perhaps the toolbox could update the windows registry and a mac/linux script to provide the functionnality “open with idea” from terminal or file explorer.
Hi Sebastien,
we are aware of this issue and working on a fix. Please follow the progress in our issue tracker: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/ALL-1266
I have created a new user in my Mac OS (High Sierra), then I logged into the previous one and I have changed the Tool Box application Install location to /Applications/JetBrains . The processed moved the apps and I could verify that they could load. Then I switch back to the other user and when trying to set the install location to /Applications/JetBrains I get the message :
“Failed to change applications directory, restoring previous one”
I also added the new user permission read/write to JetBrains folder but nothing changed.