How do you change highlighting for all files in IntelliJ?

Question

In IntelliJ, you can change the highlighting level from Inspections to Syntax using a slider. However, this only applies to a single file. Is there a way to make all files use Syntax highlighting by default?

Answer 1

This discussion about PyCharm suggests, that JetBrains does not want you to change the default highlighting level in any of their IDEs: https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/206598255-Is-there-a-way-to-set-the-default-highlighting-level-to-Syntax-instead-of-Inspection-

Anyway, I found another workaround, which at least fulfills my personal demands.

The issue for me was, that I do NOT want to disable highlighting alltogether, but rather just see the important errors instead of all the checkstyle warnings etc.

To do this (in ItelliJ 2017):

1. open the settings
2. go to Editor - Colors & Fonts - Genral
3. select Errors and Warnings - Weak Warning
4. uncheck the Error stripe mark
5. hit Apply and close the settings window

This will disable the highlighting at the scrollbar for all "Weak Warnings".

You can also do this for the normal Warning if you still receive too many highlights for your needs.