How can I export and share my IDEA bookmarks and Favorites

Question

Is there a way to export my IntelliJ IDEA favourites for backup, or to share with colleagues, like the way I can export my code formatting preferences (File > Export Settings)?

I'm working on a large codebase (one IDEA project), and have to switch between different new feature tasks and bug fixes, so I find it really convenient to create new Favourites list per Task or Jira ticket.

My Favourites tab is full with tens of favourite lists, and it's getting harder everyday to browse through them. So I could organise my work better if I could export them (ideally a different export per task, but grouping them is OK too), and reimport when I need to work on them again.

Any alternative suggestions are welcome. Thanks

Answer 1

@Eugene Morozov Fortunately yes !

And I must admit that I'm very disappointed in the fact that there is no IntelliJ team support for this topic, or some guidance to help people, as this happens pretty much after all new versions of IntelliJ and it's update, and as a consequence, it impacts a developer's work, at least for us who work on really big projects.

So I've decided, to make this short tutorial how to restore back your bookmarks for Windows 10 users :

As of version 2020.1, IntelliJ operates under hidden Windows user AppData folder : e.g. C:\Users<windows.user.name>\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea\workspace

Even more, under C:\Users<windows.user.name>\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains there are previous versions, (along with backup folders !) and under appropriate version, in folder "workspace" there are all modifications, in the form of <funny_ssh_like_fileName>.xml (e.g. 1lFTpsTT6pUo3tksBtYpwaD5qZ2.xml)

So, in my case, I've :

1. opened ~\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2020.3\workspace
2. sort files to descend based on modified flag
3. opened the newest one, and found that there is just one new bookmark, without previous ones !
4. so, I opened next recent xml, found and copied everything in between, into the current IntelliJ workspace file