Unnecessary 'return' statement

Reports return statements at the end of constructors and methods returning void. These statements are redundant and may be safely removed.

This inspection does not report in JSP files.

Example:

  void message() {
    System.out.println("Hello World");
    return;
  }

After the quick-fix is applied:

  void message() {
    System.out.println("Hello World");
  }

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.

UnnecessaryReturnStatement

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 | Java | Verbose or redundant code constructs

Use the Ignore in then branch of 'if' statement with 'else' branch option to ignore return statements in the then branch of if statements which also have an else branch.

Inspection ID: UnnecessaryReturn

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the Unnecessary 'return' statement inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Ignore in then branch of 'if' statement with 'else' branch

Option ID:

ignoreInThenBranch

Default value:

Not selected

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 UnnecessaryReturnStatement

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

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3, Qodana for JVM 2025.3,

Last modified: 03 December 2025