JetBrains Rider 2025.3 Help

Customizing various Dev Container settings

Customizing devcontainer.json file

You can customize devcontainer.json file by adding the required settings, plugins, and so on.

Add modified settings

  1. Open the devcontainer.json file in the editor.

  2. In the left gutter, click Create Dev Container, select Add Modified Settings from IDE.

    The settings are added as a customizations section. It might be useful if you want to synchronize both settings or choose some other customization option.

    JSON file customizations section

    You can also add the non-default application-level settings, modify the added settings options, sort them, or add properties from the JSON schema. Press Alt+Enter in the settings section of the devcontainer.json file and select the appropriate option.

    JSON settings

You can also install plugins from the JetBrains marketplace to a Dev Container.

Add plugins

  1. Open JetBrains marketplace in the browser.

  2. Locate the required plugin and open the plugin page.

  3. On the plugin page, scroll down to the Additional information section and copy plugin ID.

  4. Open the devcontainer.json file in the editor.

  5. Inside the customizations section, add the following code:

    { "customizations": { "jetbrains": { "plugins": [ "org.intellij.plugins.hcl" ] } } }

    The pluginID is the ID of the required plugin from JetBrains marketplace, for example, org.intellij.plugins.hcl.

Copy local Git settings

You do not need to additionally configure Git settings inside a Dev Container. The Git settings are automatically added to a Dev Container from your local global .gitconfig file.

To check the settings inside the Dev Container, do the following

  1. In the Services tool window, select Docker | Dev Containers and the necessary container.

  2. Start the container by clicking the Start button.

  3. Click and select Show Files.

  4. Select .gitconfig in the list of the files.

    The following settings are copied if available:

    user.email, user.name, pull.rebase, alias.*

    The alias.* option means all the alias settings.

Add a specific IDE backend

You can specify a name of the IDE in your container.json so that specific backend IDE will be launched automatically every time you start your Dev Container for a remote project.

  1. Open the devcontainer.json file in the editor.

  2. Inside the customizations section, add the following code:

    { "customizations": { "jetbrains": { "backend": "<IDE-name>" } } }

    <IDE-name> is the name of the IDE that you want to use. For example, IntelliJ.

Add and reference local Feature

You can define a custom configuration (local Feature) and reference it from the devcontainer.json file using code completion.

For more detailed information, refer to the Development Containers documentation.

Configure local Feature

  1. In the IDE, in the Project tool window, right-click the .devcontainer folder and select New | Folder.

  2. In the window that opens, add the name of your feature that would equal the feature ID.

  3. Right-click the created feature folder and select New | File.

    First, create the devcontainer-feature.json file and then create the install.sh file.

    As a result, both files should be inside the created feature folder.

    Local feature folder

  4. Open the devcontainer-feature.json file and add your feature configuration. For the information on related properties, refer to Development Containers documentation.

  5. Open the install.sh file and add a script that installs or configures your feature.

    Now you can reference your feature inside the devcontainer.jsonfile.

  6. Open the devcontainer.json file and inside the features section, add the reference to the local Feature using auto-completion.

02 October 2025
Using SSH keysStart Dev Container for a remote project