Opening external tools from within IntelliJ
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You can easily launch external tools from IntelliJ with custom toolbar buttons or keyboard shortcuts.
Blame it on being mainly a Java developer, but I do most of my programming in IntelliJ. It’s been the best IDE for Java development for years, but really it’s a beautiful all-round tool that can do much more than just Java. That hasn’t always meant it was my first choice for everything. For front-end web development, for example, I used Visual Studio Code for a long time, often alongside IntelliJ for the backend work, usually because plugins were available sooner or had more features.
This website is a good example. I’d been experimenting with Astro since its early alphas and used its first beta release back in July 2021 to migrate away from Jekyll. It took quite a while for an Astro plugin to become available for IntelliJ, and without things like syntax highlighting or proper formatting, working on an Astro project in IntelliJ wasn’t really an option. The .vscode directory in this repository is a relic of that early development in VS Code.
Today, I don’t even have VS Code installed anymore, and I’ve tweaked IntelliJ to be the ideal environment for me to work quickly. For small edits I use Zed, or nano (the best TUI IDE — don’t @ me 💩). But I still use some other tools out of habit: I barely use IntelliJ’s built-in terminal, and for Git I usually use Fork.
Opening external tools from IntelliJ
Which brings me to what I wanted to share: custom toolbar buttons in IntelliJ! When I finished a feature, I’d usually switch back to Ghostty with command+tab and run fork . to open the repository in Fork. I’d generally already be in the right directory, since I usually open IntelliJ with the idea command. Not much work, but you can also put a button in IntelliJ’s toolbar to do this directly.
To set this up for Fork, you need to add an External Tool first. Open Settings → Tools → External Tools, click the + button, and fill in the following:
| Field | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Open in Fork | Tooltip text |
| Description | Opens the current project in Fork | Shown on the left of the bottom status bar when you hover over the button |
| Group | External Tools | You might want to organize this better if you add many external tools |
| Program | / | Your which fork output |
| Arguments | "$ProjectFileDir$" | Passes the project directory to the Fork CLI; quotes keep paths with spaces together |
| Working directory | $ProjectFileDir$ | Runs the command from the project directory |
One important detail: under Advanced Options, untick Open console for tool output. Otherwise, IntelliJ opens a new terminal tab every time you launch Fork, which isn’t particularly useful here.
Save and apply the settings. The action is now available under Tools → External Tools → Open in Fork 🎉 and to give it a button, right-click the main toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar…. You can pick where the button goes (beside the Git controls made the most sense to me) and give it an icon (I use /).
This works for other commands too, of course. And if you’d prefer a keyboard shortcut, you can assign one to your external tool under Settings → Keymap → External Tools. The IDE is your oyster.
One more thing
You can add the built-in Back and Forward actions to the toolbar the same way. I do most things with keyboard shortcuts, but those buttons can still be handy when I’m already using the mouse and want to go back to where I was before jumping to a definition. Back can also return to a file you’ve closed if it’s still in your navigation history — very handy!
