How do I run IDEA IntelliJ on Mac OS X with JDK 7?

Question

I use Mac OS X 10.8.2, and use JDK 7. Now I downloaded the latest version of IDEA IntelliJ, 11. But it doesn't seem to start without JDK 6. Is there any workaround?

How can I run IDEA IntelliJ on Mac OS X with JDK 7?

Answer 1

UPDATE:

When running IDEA 12 on JDK 1.7 (after changing JVMVersion to 1.7* in Info.plist) make sure you have LANG=en_US.UTF-8 in your environment, see the related Java issues:

• http://java.net/jira/browse/MACOSX_PORT-165
• http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=7187821

Refer to this thread for debugging launcher issues.

Please also be aware that GUI applications on Mac have no access to your Terminal environment. If you've defined some environment variables that work fine in Terminal, other applications that you run not from the Terminal will not see these variables. A workaround for this problem is to start the application directly from the Terminal, for IDEA the following command can be used:

open -a /Applications/IntelliJ\ IDEA\ 12.app/ 

There are known issues with JDK 1.7 support on Mac right now, like missing Retina support, possible flicker, some APIs not implemented. It's highly recommended to run IDEA under JDK 1.6 for the best experience on Mac. It doesn't stop you from using JDK 1.7 as a target for building and running your projects.

---

IntelliJ IDEA 11 launcher will not work with JDK 1.7 on Mac. At the moment you must have JDK 1.6 installed so that you can run IDEA 11 and older versions.

Answer 2

Mac OSX Yosemite / El Capitan Update

I have IntelliJ 15 Ultimate installed, and I received this same message. I also have Java 1.7 and 1.8 installed.

I solved it using the following steps in a terminal:

$ cd /Applications/IntelliJ\ IDEA\ 14.app/Contents 

Edited the Info.plist file, and changed this bit:

<key>JVMVersion</key> <string>1.6*</string> 

to:

<key>JVMVersion</key> <string>1.8*</string> 

After launching, everything was golden.