Eclipse help box

Question

I am using Eclipse to program Android apps and I love how the little helper box thing comes up when you start to type and suggests things to you.

However, this only happens sporadically and I was wondering if there was a way to keep it visible for longer or, even better, a key combo I could press to bring it up. If I start to type something, it either helps me by suggesting things or doesn't appear.

Answer 1

Try Ctrl+Space. The feature is known as "content assist," "code completion," "auto-complete." In the Visual Studio world, I think it's called "Intellisense."

If you want the suggestions to appear immediately (I prefer this) you can change the delay by going to Window → Preferences → Java → Editor → Content Assist and change the Auto activation delay to 0. In my version of Eclipse (Helios for Java EE), that field is third from the bottom.

An easier way of finding this preference screen is to use the search box in the upper-left-hand corner of the prefs (as before, Window → Preferences), and typing completion. From there you can see all of the different content assist preferences that Eclipse offers. Mine has Java, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, JSP, and XML - most of those because I'm using a fancier version of Eclipse.

By default, when writing Java code, the . (period) key triggers auto-activation of content assist. You can change this setting in the same screen as the auto-activation delay.

Answer 2

I think its Control+Space for Code completion. Try that

Answer 3

Also go easy with the code completion popup delay. Dont set it to 0, i remember a strange behaviour in Eclipse where there was no popup at all.