The IntelliJ Platform user interface makes extensive use of popups - semi-modal windows that have no chrome (explicit closing buttons) and disappear automatically on focus loss. Making use of these controls in your plugin ensures a consistent user experience between your plugin and the rest of the IDE.
Popups can optionally display a title, are optionally movable and resizable (and support remembering their size), and can be nested (show another popup when an item is selected).
The JBPopupFactory interface allows you to create popups that display different kinds of components, depending on your specific needs. The most commonly used methods are:
Method
Description
createComponentPopupBuilder()
Generic, allows showing any Swing component.
See ComponentPopupBuilder's methods for possible options.
Example: IntentionPreviewPopupUpdateProcessor creating a popup rendering the intention preview.
createPopupChooserBuilder()
For choosing one or more items from a plain java.util.List.
See PopupChooserBuilder's methods for possible options.
Example: ShowMessageHistoryAction creating a popup with recent commit messages history in the commit message text area.
createConfirmation()
For choosing between two options, and performing different actions depending on which option is selected.
Example: VariableInplaceRenamer creating confirmation popup after invalid variable name is provided in the inplace rename action.
createActionGroupPopup()
Show actions from an Action Group and executes the action selected by the user.
Example: ShowRecentFindUsagesGroup invoked via and showing recent find usages group popup.
Action group popups support different ways of choosing an action from the keyboard, in addition to the normal arrow keys. By passing one of the constants in the JBPopupFactory.ActionSelectionAid enumeration, you can choose whether an action can be selected by
pressing a key corresponding to its sequential number
typing part of its text (speed search)
pressing a mnemonic character
For popups with a fixed set of items, the recommended selection method is sequential numbering. For popups with a variable and potentially large number of items, speed search typically works best.
To create a list-like popup which is more flexible than a simple JList and doesn't represent the possible choices as actions in an action group, use JBPopupFactory.createListPopup() with a ListPopupStep implementation (usually, BaseListPopupStep is used as a base). The key methods to override are:
getTextFor() - returning the text to display for an item
onChosen() - called when an item is selected
By returning a new popup step from the onChosen() method, you can implement hierarchical (nested) popups.
Once you've created the popup, you need to display it by calling one of the show() methods. You can let the IntelliJ Platform automatically choose the position based on the context, by calling showInBestPositionFor(), or specify the position explicitly through methods like showUnderneathOf() and showInCenterOf().
The show() methods return immediately and do not wait for the popup to be closed.
To perform some action when the popup is closed, use one of the following approaches:
attach a listener to it using the addListener() method
override a method of the popup contents such as PopupStep.onChosen()
attach an event handler to your own component within the popup
29 April 2025
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