variable highlighting no longer occurring in phpstorm

Question

Normally in PHPStorm if I click on a variable, other instances of that variable will get highlighted.

However, I somehow made changes to the settings, and for some reason led to this not happening anymore. Does anyone know where I can revert this such that variable instances will get highlighted once again?

Answer 1

Make sure that the File Analysis isn't set to "Power Saving Mode".

There's a small police officer in the bottom right of your PHPStorm window that shouldn't be grayed out.

If it is grayed out then you have disabled inspection/highlighting.

To re-enable it either click on the icon (which opens the dialog from the picture) or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+h (on windows) which is the shortcut for "Configure Current File Analysis..." and opens the same dialog.

There simply uncheck the check box "Power Save Mode".

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Note: The Highlighting Level rulers are in fact saved for every file independently but the Power Save Mode checkbox is global. And while "Power Save Mode" implies that it might check occasionally instead of all the time it seems that this disables inspection entirely and thus might be better off labeled something like "Disable inspection globaly".