Is it safe to share exported IntelliJ settings?

Question

I've recently been exporting my settings from my various IDE's to share with friends. I plan to put them in a shared public location, so I was wondering if IntelliJ exports any sensitive information (saved password hashes, etc) that I should be aware of. If it matters, I'm using the GitHub add-on and the Scala plugin, and the most recent IntelliJ Community Edition.

The reason I ask is (as a new IntelliJ user and longtime Studio user) I know that Studio warns you of possibly sensitive information when you export settings, and excludes it by default. I saw no such warning in IntelliJ and I'm wondering if that's because there's nothing to be worried about, or...

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Good question.

I wanted to check it as well, so I exported my settings to look around there. I didn't find any passwords or credentials information there, but there were some things that could be considered "personal":

1. File header templates - mine for example contained my email there.
2. Last opened project location path.
3. Recently opened projects - for "Reopen" dialogue.
4. RECENT_DIR_STRINGS setting - not sure what are these used for, but it contained around 25 paths of code directories in my file system.

So to sum of - unless you were working on some secret projects on the side, it seems like it's safe to share it with colleagues and friends. Would be careful about releasing the settings to a public domain.