As they hinted previously, JetBrains finally forced their IDEs into what they’ve been calling New UI. Release notes incorrectly describe the change as setting “New UI as the default”. New UI was already made the default many versions ago. What’s new is that New UI is now the only option–the ability to opt out of New UI has now been removed.
New UI is not vastly different from the existing UI, but its changes are obviously for the worse, as seen in the official announcement. Buttons that were one click away are now two clicks away. Information that was on screen is now hidden and requires clicking to find. Buttons that were previously labeled are now only icons that you have to mouse over and read the tooltips to decipher. In the “gained” column, we get a few extra pixels of real estate for the editor, which is in no way worth the tradeoff.
Options today
IDE users before 2024.2 could toggle a checkbox in Settings >> Appearance & Behavior >> New UI to opt out of it, but that option is now removed. So what can you do now?
You can install this plugin, which restores the UI. It is published by JetBrains, though they have given no word on how long or how well this plugin will be supported, though it seems to work well for the time being.
Hundreds of users have also taken to JetBrains to complain, such as on this blog page. As various people pointed out, the blog’s author falsely states that “87% of our users have adopted the new UI, despite it not being the default option for existing users.” The reality is that New UI was made the default years ago, as all longtime users are well aware. If it had been the case that the New UI was never the default, 87% would be a mind-bogglingly high opt-in rate. 87% of users of any software do not freely choose to adopt any new preference unless doing so unlocks major new capabilities or avoids grave defects that would be present otherwise. Since neither of those conditions is true for this situation (even someone who believes New UI is an improvement has to admit it’s not a major one), a number like 87% is just unbelievable unless the option were forced. As a matter of fact, the option was forced as the new default, and now is forced as the only option, so 87%, and now near 100% are believable numbers.
Here’s hoping JetBrains stops regressing like this. Speaking of which, I recently celebrated the 3rd birthday of this regression.