How do I turn off the unlimited whitespace in IntelliJ editor?

540
votes

How do I remove the ability to move the cursor after then end of line in IntelliJ?

6
intellij-ideacursoreditor
It's funny - I want exactly the opposite for Eclipse, to enable virtual space. But I see it's currently an unresolved bug (21000). – Barry Kelly
Go here to vote for "unlimited whitespace" to be turned off as the default: youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEABKL-6478 – rogerdpack
Guys, could you provide more information on why that virtual space is inconvenient for you? – denis.zhdanov
@denis.zhdanov I want to be able to press right-arrow and get to the beginning of the next line from the end of the current, or click arbitrarily to the right of a line and have the cursor end up exactly on the end of the line. I seldom want to put the cursor an arbitrary distance beyond the end of existing text and have the editor insert a bunch of whitespace for me when I start typing. I understand some people might prefer being able to do that, but for me I'd rather have it work as I'm used to every other text editor working. It's great that it's configurable, everyone's happy. – nairbv
Intellj 13 has changed the default for this to be off. – Bjorn

6 Answers

783
votes

File menu -> Settings -> Editor -> General -> Virtual Space and uncheck 'Allow placement of caret after end of line' . You may also uncheck the other options in the Virtual Space panel.

227
votes

If the other answers don't seem to be working, you might have Column Selection Mode enabled. On my Mac it's mapped to Cmd+Shift+8. It's located under the Edit menu. That menu item will show a little checkmark when the mode is enabled.

20
votes

To get the expected behavior where indentations are respected when you click on a line :

In Preferences > Editor > Virtual Space

Check :

Allow placement of caret inside tabs.

Uncheck :

Allow placement of caret after end of line.

This was really annoying to me and makes very little sense as a default behavior to me.

19
votes

Note that for Intellij IDEA 11 for mac, settings are placed under the IntelliJ IDEA menu and called preferences. (Maybe some sort of mac default ?)

4
votes

What Matt_Bro said (first answer), but if you've already got the box unchecked in preferences, try re-checking it (I checked all the virtual space boxes) and restarting. Then uncheck and hit apply--at this point unlimited space was disabled for me.

3
votes

IntelliJ IDEA 2016

By default, it's turned off (unchecked).

If it is turned on, you can use one of the following 2 approaches:

  1. File > Settings... (or Ctrl+Alt+S) > Editor > General > Virtual Space section > uncheck Allow placement of caret after end of line

    File > Settings

    Editor General Allow placement

  2. Help > Find Action... (or Ctrl+Shift+A) > type "Virtual Space: Allow end" > Enter or left click (to switch between On and Off) > Esc

    Help > Find Action

    Allow Caret On Off