Buggy behavior on Mac with IntelliJ IDEA 2026.2.1 and SonarQube plugin
Answered
After updating to latest IDEA from Aug 9th 2026, I've observed the following behavior:
As seen at the end of the line CREATE_USER_GROUPS_STMT it (correctly) states 1 usage, but SonarQube keeps insisting that I should “Remove this unused private field”. Closing the file and re-opening solves the issue, no more yellow ‘snake’ below the field name. Probably something updated on 2026.2.1 broke sync with SonarQube plugin somehow?
Thanks in advance for taking a look, even if I'm aware this may belong more to SonarQube than to IDEA.
Best regards,
Fabián.
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Hello Fmandelbaum
Thanks for the screenshot. It makes the mismatch clear. This traces to the SonarQube plugin itself (SonarLint for IntelliJ), not IntelliJ IDEA.
In July 2026, the plugin replaced its highlighting mechanism with a new component called
DirectHighlighter.DirectHighlighterrenders findings directly into the editor, instead of going through IntelliJ's daemon. The daemon is what used to re-run the check on every edit and clear stale warnings automatically. See the plugin's own "Rework highlighting processing" pull request, merged 2026-07-17.IntelliJ IDEA's own code for external inspection plugins already guards against this kind of staleness. It discards a plugin's result if the file changed while the plugin was still analyzing it. Nothing in that check changed recently, so this is not an IntelliJ IDEA regression.
SonarQube for IDE 12.6.0, released on 2026-07-21, is the first version to include this change. That is close to your IDEA update on August 9, which is probably why it looked tied to the IDE.
As you found, closing and reopening the file clears the warning, and it's the workaround until SonarSource fixes the bug.
Please report this to SonarSource directly via their issue tracker and mention the pull request above for context. The plugin's own follow-up fix in that same change may not cover your exact trigger, where a field gains a new usage after SonarQube already flagged it. Your report could help close that gap. Check first whether a newer plugin release already fixes it.
Hello Monica, thanks for your quick and detailed response. I've opened an issue (I hope, it's actually a Topic, on SQ's parlance) on their side, hopefully providing enough details.
Best regards,
Fabián.
Hi Fmandelbaum
It's always a pleasure to help. Hopefully it'll be resolved soon.
Have a great day!