Unused flow

Reports Kotlinx Coroutines Flows that are created but never consumed or passed to other functions.

The code defining a Flow does not run unless the Flow is collected by using a terminal operator.

Example:

fun foo() {
    flowOf(1).onEach { println(it) }
}

See some examples of terminal operators.

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.

UnusedFlow

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 | Probable bugs

Inspection ID: UnusedFlow

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 UnusedFlow

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