Testing a Fresh Look for JetBrains IDEs

Visual context is always changing – and so should the look and feel of the tools you use every day. We know how much a familiar UI matters, and we’ve heard your feedback from past updates. That’s why we’re taking an iterative, careful approach this time: small, focused improvements, shared early, with your feedback guiding what comes next.

In the latest 2025.2 EAP of JetBrains IDEs, you can find two new UI styles: One Island and Many Islands, each available with both dark and light modes. Ultimately, one of these styles will become the new default – your feedback will help us decide which one.

This update is purely visual – all functionality remains unchanged. You can switch between the new styles and your previous theme at any time.

Why the new themes?

With this update, we aim to achieve several goals:

• Stay current: We want our UI to feel fresh and modern, keeping pace with evolving design trends. While the last UI overhaul was introduced a couple of years ago, its foundations were laid over five years ago. This time, we’re focusing purely on visual refinements, with minimal changes to update the look.
• Refine the previous UI update: We’re improving areas where the design can be clearer or more effective, such as the separation between the editor and tool windows, more prominent navigation, and better tab visibility.
• Align with our broader design language: We aim to bring the JetBrains IDEs closer in line with the design of our other products, such as Toolbox and Fleet, for a more consistent experience across the JetBrains ecosystem.

One Island style

Many Islands style

We need your help

We invite you to try the new styles and share your thoughts. After using a new theme for a while, you’ll get a prompt to fill out a short survey that shouldn’t take more than five minutes to complete. Your feedback will help us decide which style to finalize and roll out as the default.

Known issues

We’re already working on some known issues. Please vote and comment on them, or submit a new issue if you notice something we haven’t already been made aware of.