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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T07:52:31+00:00

Do Eclipse have a plugin for type ahead autocompletion like Visual Studio, so I

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Do Eclipse have a plugin for type ahead autocompletion like Visual Studio, so I don’t have to destroy my spacebar by pressing Ctrl+Space all the time? (If you don’t know how it works in Visual Studio, please don’t bother answering.)

And also, can I limit the autocomplete to imported packages, rather than every single Java class on earth? It’s fustrating seeing suggestions from awt and swing etc., when I’m working with GWT. And I don’t want to add every single Java class to the filter, that’s just stupid. (Again, like how it’s done in Visual Studio!)

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Regarding your second part, yes you can

    • Open Eclipse
    • Select Window/Preferences from the menu
    • Expand Java/Appearance/Type Filters from the menu on the left
    • Click the “Add package” button, enter “java.awt” (without the quotes) and click OK
    • OK your way out

    This will make Eclipse remove any matching classes from the java.awt package from your type ahead list. Very nice…

    So “type-ahead” exists in Eclipse (mentioned in this status report in June 2006), but is synonym of auto-completion, most often triggered by CTRL+ Space… (which is not exactly what you are looking for)

    To be more specific, the kind of automatic auto-completion (completion while you are typing, with a “Common” or “All” list of possible completions) you have in Visual Studio is not there in Eclipse (actually read below):

    alt text

    Original answer January 2010:

    At least, not without a dedicating plugin.
    And even with that plugin, it would have to follow a TemplateCompletionProcessor, meaning it would need a list of characters triggering said completion (again, not what you are looking for), by redefining method getCompletionProposalAutoActivationCharacters().

    Update November 2011:

    Cristi mentions in his answer (upvoted) a great workaround, which consists adding all the letters as Auto activation triggers for java.
    See also “Automatically opening completion window in Eclipse“.

    From the thread “Eclipse auto-completion “:

    Windows -> Preferences -> Java -> Editor -> Content Assist
    • Set delay to: 0 (actually >0 is better: 50, it avoids CPU picks because of constant listening)
    • Set triggers to: 
        .(abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV WXYZ@

    content assist options

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