What’s fixed in IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1

Dmitriy Smirnov

Welcome to the overview of fixes and improvements in IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1.

In this release, we have resolved over 1,000 bugs and usability issues, including 334
reported by users. Below are the most impactful changes that will help you work with greater confidence every day.

Performance

We continue to prioritize reliability, working to improve application performance, fix freezes, optimize operations, and cover the most common use cases with metrics. Using our internal tools, we identified and resolved 40 specific scenarios that caused UI freezes.

However, internal tooling alone cannot uncover every issue. To identify additional cases, we enabled automatic error and freeze reporting in EAP builds. By collecting this data, we gain a real, unfiltered picture of what’s going wrong, how often it happens, and how many users are affected. This allows us to prioritize fixes based on real impact rather than guesswork.

As always, we prioritize your privacy and security. When using EAP builds, you maintain full control and can disable automatic error and freeze reporting in Settings | Appearance & Behavior | System Settings | Data Sharing. Thank you for helping us build better tools!

Terminal

Version 2026.1 enhances your productivity by streamlining the experience offered by the terminal, a crucial workspace for developer workflows involving CLI-based AI agents.

First, we fixed the Esc behavior – it is now handled by the shell instead of switching focus to the editor, so it does not break the AI-agent workflow. Additionally, Shift+Enter now inserts a new line, making it easier to write multi-line prompts and commands directly. This behavior can be disabled in Settings | Advanced Settings | Terminal.

We also improved the detection of absolute and relative file paths in terminal output, allowing you to open files and folders with a single click in any context. When you encounter compilation or build errors, or submit a task to an AI coding agent, you can jump directly to the referenced file and review or fix issues faster.

Link navigation is activated by holding Ctrl (or Cmd on macOS) and clicking – just like in external terminals.

JVM language support

Better Kotlin bean registration support

Kotlin’s strong DSL capabilities are a perfect fit for Spring Framework 7’s BeanRegistrar API. In 2026.1, we’ve made working with programmatic registration as productive as annotation-based configuration.

The IDE ensures complete visibility into your application structure thanks to the Structure tool window, providing better endpoint visibility, intuitive navigation with gutter icons, integrated HTTP request generation, and path variable support.

New Kotlin coroutine inspections

To help maintain code quality, we’ve introduced a set of new inspections for the Kotlin coroutines library, covering common pitfalls.

Read more about coroutine inspections in this article.

Scala

Working with sbt projects inside WSL and Docker containers is now as smooth as working with local projects. We’ve also improved code highlighting performance and sped up sbt project synchronization.

To reduce cognitive load and provide a more ergonomic UI, we’ve redesigned the Scala code highlighting settings. A new Settings page consolidates previously scattered options, making them cleaner, more intuitive, and easier to access.

You can now disable built-in inspections when compiler highlighting is sufficient, or configure compilation delay for compiler-based highlighting. Settings for Scala 2 and Scala 3 projects are now independent, and the type-aware highlighting option has been integrated with the rest of the settings.

You can read more about these updates this article.

User interface

With IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1, we’ve continued to prioritize ultimate comfort and an ergonomic UI, ensuring your workspace is as accessible and customizable as your code.

The long-awaited ability to sync the IDE theme with the OS is now available to Linux users, bringing parity with macOS and Windows. Enable it in Settings |Appearance & Behavior | Appearance.

The code editor now supports OpenType stylistic sets. Enjoy more expressive typography with your favorite fonts while coding. Configure them via Editor |Font, and preview glyph changes instantly with a helpful tooltip before applying a set.

Windows users who rely on the keyboard can now bring the IDE’s main menu into focus by pressing the Alt key. This change improves accessibility for screen reader users.

Version control

We continue to make small but impactful improvements that reduce friction and support your everyday workflow.

You can now amend any recent commit directly from the Commit tool window – no more ceremonies involving interactive rebase. Simply select the target commit and the necessary changes, then confirm them – the IDE will take care of the rest.

In addition to Git worktrees, we’ve improved branch workflows by introducing the Checkout & Update action, which pulls all remote changes.

Furthermore, fetching changes can now be automated – no need for a separate plugin. Enable Fetch remote changes automatically in Settings | Git.

In-IDE reviews for GitLab merge requests now offer near feature parity with the web interface. Multi-line comments, comment navigation, image uploads, and assignee selection when creating a merge request are all available directly in the IDE, so you can stay focused without switching to the browser.

The Subversion, Mercurial, and Perforce plugins are no longer bundled with the IDE distribution, but you can still install them from JetBrains Marketplace.

Databases

We’ve enhanced the Explain Plan workflow with UI optimizations for the Query Plan tab, an additional separate pane for details about the execution plan row, inner tabs that hold flame graphs, and an action to copy the query plan in the database’s native format.

JetBrains daemon

IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 includes a lightweight background service – jetbrainsd – that handles jetbrains:// protocol links from documentation, learning resources, and external tools, opening them directly in your IDE without requiring you to have the Toolbox App running.

Sunsetting of Code With Me

As of version 2026.1, Code With Me will be unbundled from all JetBrains IDEs and will instead be available as a separate plugin on JetBrains Marketplace. Version 2026.1 will be the last IDE release to officially support Code With Me as we gradually sunset the service.

Read the full announcement and timeline in our blog post.

Enhanced AI management and analytics for organizations

We are working hard to provide development teams with centralized control over AI and built-in analytics to understand adoption, usage, and cost. As part of the effort, we’ve introduced the JetBrains Console. It adds visibility into how your teams use AI in practice, including information about active users, credit consumption, and acceptance rates for AI-generated code.

The JetBrains Console is available to all organizations with a JetBrains AI subscription, providing the trust and visibility required to manage professional-grade development at any scale.

That’s it for this overview.

Let us know what you think about the fixes and priorities in this release. Your feedback helps us steer the product so it works best for you!

We’d also love to hear your thoughts on this overview and the format in general.

Update to IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1 now and see how it has improved. Don’t forget to join us on X , Bluesky, or LinkedIn and share your favorite updates.

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