Redundant backticks

Reports redundant backticks in references.

Some of the Kotlin keywords are valid identifiers in Java, for example: in, object, is. If a Java library uses a Kotlin keyword for a method, you can still call the method escaping it with the backtick character (`), for example, foo.`is`(bar). Sometimes this escaping is redundant and can be safely omitted. The inspection discovers and reports such cases and is paired with the 'Remove redundant backticks' quick-fix, which allows you to amend the highlighted code.

Examples:

  fun `is`(x: String) {}
  fun foo() {
      `is`("bar") // 'is' is a keyword, backticks are required
  }

  fun `test that smth works as designed`() {} // OK, complex identifier for readability improvement

  val `a` = 1  // no need for backticks

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

RemoveRedundantBackticks

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Kotlin | Redundant constructs

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection RemoveRedundantBackticks

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025