intelliJ not working on El capitan 10.11

I just installed the new OS El capitan 10.11 and discovered that intelliJ isn't working on it.

When I launch it, I get this error:

"This application requires the legacy Java SE 6 runtime which is unavailable for this version of OS X."

I'm guessin that Java hasn't been set up properly yet. Does anybody have any ideas on how I can make this work?

Solution 1:

If you did an upgrade of an 10.10 install where everything still worked fine (and where the Apple-supplied java 6 runtime was installed), the following solution might work. I had the same problem as you had, and this solved my issues:

1. Quit IntelliJ and go to the Applications-folder in Finder
2. Right-click the IntelliJ.app and choose: Show package contents
3. Open the Contents-folder (this was the only file/folder in my case)
4. Open the Info.plist file using a text-editor of some kind (TextEditor should do the job, but I prefer using Sublime for such tasks).

5. Find the following tag:

   <key>JVMVersion</key>
   <string>1.6*,1.7+</string>
   

6. Remove 1.6*, from the string-tag, so it becomes:

   <key>JVMVersion</key>
   <string>1.7+</string>
   

7. Save the file, and try to start IntelliJ again.

As I said, this seems to work for me. I do have to note that I am using IntelliJ 14, but I think this process should work for 13 as well.

Also, when a more permanent solution from Apple comes out, it might be a good idea to undo these steps (just add the removed text again) or reinstall IntelliJ completely.

Solution 2:

I simply reinstalled Java 6 from this Apple link https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572?locale=en_US and IntelliJ 14 was able to recognize it. This also allows me to continue using Java 1.6 in Intellij.

More here: https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/articles/206827627-IDE-doesn-t-start-after-updating-to-Mac-OS-Yosemite-or-Mavericks

From Jetbrains support:

JDK 1.6 is required to run and may be missing on your system. Please install Apple JDK 1.6. There should be a window with the suggestion to install Java when you start the product for the first time, but it could be hidden by other application windows.