Internal Actions – UI Inspector
The UI Inspector is a tool to interrogate elements of the IDE's UI to get an internal description of each element.
tip
If the menu item Tools | Internal Actions is not available in the IDE, then the first step is Enabling Internal Mode.
Centering the cursor on a UI element and pressing Ctrl+Alt (Ctrl+Option on macOS) when clicking the left mouse button reveals the properties of the Swing component.
For example, to get information about the Build Project button's "hammer" icon on the toolbar (highlighted in green), put the mouse cursor on the icon and press Ctrl/Cmd+Alt while clicking the mouse.
The UI Inspector displays the icon details:

Sometimes, inspecting a complex component's properties is not enough to understand how the component was created and configured. UI Inspector gives the possibility of finding the code where the selected component was added, which makes it much easier to understand which APIs can be used to build custom components with similar complexity.
To find the place where the component was added, select the added-at property to show the stack trace:

Various components used in the IntelliJ Platform expose additional properties. These can be useful to locate the underlying implementation, related Action, and so on.
Custom Swing components can also provide additional properties via UiInspectorContextProvider
or its dedicated subclasses (2020.1 and later).
Type | Properties |
---|---|
| Clicked Renderer (Class) - |
| Clicked Renderer (Class) - Accessible Name - Icon - Marker Info - Element / Navigation Handler - |
gutter renderer - | |
| Inlay Renderer (Class) - Inlay Gutter Renderer - Inlay Properties - |
intention action/quick fix - |
Type | Properties |
---|---|
Action - Action ID - Action Action Plugin ID - contributing plugin | |
Toolbar Group - Action Group ID All Toolbar Groups - contained Action Group IDs Target component - |
Type | Properties |
---|---|
dialogWrapperClass - | |
Tool Window ID - Tool Window Icon - Tool Window Factory - | |
treeModelClass - |
Enable Internal Actions | UI | Debugging Info in UI (2024.2+) (View | Appearance | Details in Tree View in earlier versions) in Internal Mode to show Settings page id
in the tree.
Some additional properties are available when inspecting the Settings dialog (2023.1+).
tip
UI Inspector must be invoked only after opening the Settings dialog.
Settings page Reference | Properties |
---|---|
All settings | Configurable class - Configurable ID - Configurable weight - |
Editor | Color Scheme | Text Attributes Key - |
Editor | File Types | FileTypeID - FileType Class - |
Editor | Inspections | Inspection key - Inspection Inspection tool class - Inspection implementation |
Editor | Inlays | Inlay Group Key - Inlay Group Key - Inlay Provider Model ID - Inlay ImmediateConfigurable ID - |
Editor | Intentions | Intention Class - Intention description directory - |
Plugins | Plugin ID - Plugin Plugin Dependencies - IDs of dependent plugins |
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