IntelliJ IDEA 2024.3 Help

Repair IDE

IntelliJ IDEA provides the means to refresh and recover cache files in a particular project step by step. Using the Repair IDE action, you can troubleshoot the issues with unresolved code or corrupted caches in your project without invalidating the cache and restarting the IDE. IntelliJ IDEA processes only the current project during the recovery, so you will not lose the cache files of all projects. Thus, the next time you open a project, you will not need to wait for cache recreation.

IntelliJ IDEA provides several recovery steps intended to resolve issues you might experience when working in the IDE, for example, when some class isn't resolved or navigation features don't work correctly. After each step, you can check whether the issue persists and decide to continue or complete the recovery process.

  1. In the main menu, go to File | Cache Recovery | Repair IDE. IntelliJ IDEA will automatically launch the first recovery step and refresh the virtual file system.

    IntelliJ IDEA will display a notification that you can use to continue or complete the recovery process. If everything works correctly, click Everything Works Now to complete the recovery process. You can do this after any step of the recovery process.

  2. To continue the recovery process, click Rescan Project Indexes. IntelliJ IDEA will find all files in your project that aren't indexed and index them.

    The first step of IDE Repair
  3. To move to the next recovery step, click Reopen Project. This will reopen your project without restarting IntelliJ IDEA.

    The second step of IDE Repair
  4. To move to the next recovery step, click Drop Shared Indexes. This will remove all shared indexes related to your project.

    The third step of IDE Repair
  5. To move to the last recovery step, click Reindex Project. IntelliJ IDEA will examine your project code to rebuild an index of classes, methods, objects, and other code elements that make up your application.

    The fourth step of IDE Repair
  6. After going through all the recovery steps, if the issue persists, you can continue with cache invalidation. Click the More link and select Invalidate Caches and Restart.

    The last step of IDE Repair

Repair file-related caches

You can launch the first two steps of the recovery process on a single file in your project.

  • In the Project tool window (Alt+1) , right-click the file you want to fix and select Cache Recovery | Repair IDE on File.

Invalidate external system cache in a Gradle project or a Maven project

Instead of deleting the entire project directory when you encounter problems related to the incorrect synchronization of a Gradle or Maven project, you can invalidate the build system cache and re-sync your project.

  • From the main menu, select File | Cache Recovery | Invalidate Build System Caches and Re-sync.

    IntelliJ IDEA closes and reopens the project. It also syncs the project again. During this process, the cache-state.xml file is updated.

Last modified: 11 October 2024