Background

IntelliJ IDE for Linux.

Question

Why do minimize/maximize/close buttons in the IDE look differently from other applications and how I can make them consistent with native applications?

Example:

IDE

all the other applications

Answer

Quick solution for IDE 2025.3+ versions on Wayland

Go to the main menu "Help | Edit custom VM options" and add the following lines

-Dawt.toolkit.name=WLToolkit
-Dsun.awt.wl.WindowDecorationStyle=server

then restart

The detailed explanation

There was a feature request to merge the main menu with the window title (hide OS title), Need an option to remove the title bar on Linux, intended to reduce the vertical space occupied by the IDE window. Custom title has been turned on by default starting from 2023.2. To implement it, we have written the custom window decorations so the native application button style is not automatically applied.

Buttons style

For Gnome and KDE Plasma which were the most popular desktops at that point we added two sets of icons that correspond to defaults on those desktops. If you use a different window manager, then the style might be different from the rest of your applications.

To have the native OS buttons, you can turn off the custom title in the IDE:

2025.3 and newer (only for Wayland systems)

• Check that you have Wayland (echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE). If you don't see Wayland, it means the below won't work. Add lines

-Dawt.toolkit.name=WLToolkit
-Dsun.awt.wl.WindowDecorationStyle=server

to "Help | Edit custom VM options" and restart

2025.1 and newer

Uncheck the Merge main menu with window title option under IDE Settings | Advanced Settings, User Interface:

Alternatively, uncheck the corresponding option in the main toolbar context menu:

2024.3 and older

Uncheck the Merge main menu with window title option under IDE Settings | Appearance & Behavior | Appearance, UI Options:

Buttons placement

By default, the order of buttons is defined by the system setting that you can check with gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout command in the OS terminal.

If the IDE for some reason shows an incorrect button placement, you can customize it via the registry key:

1. Go to the main menu Help | Find action (or press Shift-Shift and tab to Actions)
2. Type "Registry" in the search string and select the Registry... item
3. In the appeared window, start typing the key ide.linux.window.buttons.config and set the value you need (the format should be as in the command output in the OS).

Example: icon:minimize,maximize,close - buttons on the right close,minimize,maximize:icon - buttons on the left