If you started IntelliJ through "JetBrains Toolbox", then in order to reload the environment variables you need to close them both (IntelliJ & Toolbox), start the toolbox, and then start IntelliJ via the toolbox.

Answer from Eng.Fouad on Stack Overflow
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JetBrains
intellij-support.jetbrains.com › hc › en-us › community › posts › 206230739-Refreshing-environment-variables
Refreshing environment variables – IDEs Support (IntelliJ Platform) | JetBrains
April 25, 2012 - Normally, environment variables should be reloaded after the IDE restart. Do you have Toolbox application installed? Try to restart not only IntelliJ process but Toolbox application as well · Hi Egor Klepikov I don't have the Toolbox application installed. And I'm facing that issue: env. variables are not updated after IDEA restart/validate cache
Discussions

Setting up and using environment variables in IntelliJ Idea - Stack Overflow
Run > Edit Configurations > Edit Configuration Templates > TestNG/JUnit > Environment Variables ... Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments. ... Make sure you restart IntelliJ after changing a system environment variable. It'd be nice to have a "reload" feature! More on stackoverflow.com
🌐 stackoverflow.com
Environment Variable Manager Plugin
nice, forgetting to update env bars across multiple run configurations catches me out all too often, keen to give this a go. More on reddit.com
🌐 r/IntelliJIDEA
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May 6, 2025
Probably a stupid question about JDK version in IntelliJ
There must have been a step missing in the course about downloading and going through the install steps for Java. That’s why the shell can’t find it, it’s not in the cmd path as others mentioned. But you know know the place where IntelliJ helpfully installed one for you. So use that long path, add \java -version to the end of it and execute that long command. You’ll have a command that looks like c:\……\bin\java -version More on reddit.com
🌐 r/IntelliJIDEA
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July 31, 2021
IntelliJ Idea installation (for java android programming) what does this checkbox means (add launchers dir to the path)
Any programs in a directory in your system %PATH% variable are accessible in the cmd console from any location. If you check that then you can open a command line console in any directory and enter the command "idea" to open IntelliJ IDEA. If you don't check it then to launch idea from the cmd console you would first have to navigate to the install directory. You can always add the directory to your PATH later if you don't do it now but you want to in the future (just search "Environment Variables" in Windows and edit PATH and add the intelliJ IDEA install directory to the list of directories there). I've never opened intelliJ this way, I just use a shortcut in my taskbar (or search in the windows search menu). My guess is you wouldn't need it, if you used the command line a lot you should be familiar with the PATH variable. It's just a convenience option for command line users so that they don't have to manually add the program to PATH. More on reddit.com
🌐 r/androiddev
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February 1, 2021
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JetBrains
intellij-support.jetbrains.com › hc › en-us › community › posts › 360002843460-Environment-variables-not-updated-after-IntelliJ-update
Environment variables not updated after IntelliJ update – IDEs Support (IntelliJ Platform) | JetBrains
January 30, 2019 - The path of the IntelliJ installation directory contains its version (i.e. C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\JetBrains\Toolbox\apps\IDEA-U\ch-0\183.5153.38\). Each time IntelliJ is updated to a new version, this path changes. However, the environment variable IDEA_JDK_64, which points to this path, is left unchanged.
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JetBrains
jetbrains.com › help › idea › program-arguments-and-environment-variables.html
Program arguments, VM options, environment variables | IntelliJ IDEA Documentation
May 27, 2025 - For quick configuration – type the environment variables directly into the Environment variables field, using the following format: VAR1=ABC;VAR2=CDE.
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LaunchCode
education.launchcode.org › gis-devops › configurations › 02-environment-variables-intellij › index.html
Configuration: Environment Variables - IntelliJ — LaunchCode: GIS DevOps documentation
In this configuration we will learn how to create new environment variables in IntelliJ, and we will learn the syntax for calling those variables in our code.
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Twilio
twilio.com › en-us › blog › set-up-env-variables-intellij-idea-java
Configure Environment Variables in IntelliJ IDEA | Twilio
July 3, 2024 - Locate the Run tab at the top of the IntelliJ IDEA console and select Edit Configurations… in the dropdown as seen below: Another window displaying the "Run/Debug Configurations" will pop up with the details regarding the project. Create an Application named "SMSApp". In the Environment variables section as seen below, copy and paste the following, replacing the values with your own.
Find elsewhere
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CodingTechRoom
codingtechroom.com › question › force-reload-environment-variables-intellij
How Can I Force Reload Environment Variables in IntelliJ IDEA Without Restarting? - CodingTechRoom
// Using command in Terminal to reload env variables echo 'export MY_ENV_VAR=value' >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc // Checking if updated System.getenv("MY_ENV_VAR"); // should output 'value' IntelliJ caches environment variables on startup.
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JetBrains
youtrack.jetbrains.com › issue › IDEA-296004 › System-Environment-Variables-not-updating
System Environment Variables not updating : IDEA-296004
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Baeldung
baeldung.com › home › ide › how to set up environment variables in intellij idea
How to Set Up Environment Variables in IntelliJ IDEA | Baeldung
May 11, 2024 - In the above process, we added the environment variable testUser baeldung into a project in IntelliJ by making changes in the run configuration.
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JetBrains
intellij-support.jetbrains.com › hc › en-us › community › posts › 205820189-How-to-set-default-environment-variables
How to set "default" environment variables? – IDEs Support (IntelliJ Platform) | JetBrains
June 30, 2015 - Please, go to `Run| Edit Configurations| Defaults| Python tests| Unitests/Nosetests/...` and specify your environment variables in "Environment variables" field, then apply changes.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/intellijidea › environment variable manager plugin
r/IntelliJIDEA on Reddit: Environment Variable Manager Plugin
May 6, 2025 -

Hey everyone!

👋 I recently built a plugin called Environment Variable Manager to help manage environment variable sets directly within IntelliJ IDEA. I made it because I was constantly switching between different configs and got tired of copy-pasting env vars and manually updating into run configurations.

The plugin lets you:

  • Create/edit/clone multiple env var sets

  • Import/export from .env files

  • Easily switch the active set and inject it into your run configs with one click

  • Keep everything persistent across IDE restarts

It’s open source and still pretty new—if you want to give it a try or share feedback, I’d love that. Contributions are also very welcome!

🔗 JetBrains Plugin: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/27264-environment-variable-manager/

🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/yelynn1/intellij-env-manager

Thanks! 😊

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JetBrains
youtrack.jetbrains.com › issue › IJPL-49868
Add a "refresh environment variables" action : IJPL-49868
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JetBrains
intellij-support.jetbrains.com › hc › en-us › community › posts › 10075122899986-How-to-use-env-or-envrc-files-to-pull-env-vars-for-run-debug-configurations
How to use .env or .envrc files to pull env vars for run/debug configurations? – IDEs Support (IntelliJ Platform) | JetBrains
February 13, 2023 - Then if I want to create a run/debug ... in the "Environment variables" section with their values. Isn't there a way to tell the run/debug configuration to obtain the env vars from my .env or .envrc instead? If I want to update a variable I have to do it in both places, as sometimes I run the code outside of the IDE. ... Please try out EnvFile plugin. ... I installed EnvFile in IntelliJ Ultimate, ...
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JetBrains
plugins.jetbrains.com › plugin › 8063-environment-variables-in-path-variables
Environment Variables in Path Variables - IntelliJ IDEs Plugin | Marketplace
An IntelliJ IDEA plugin to automatically add environment variables to Path Variables. Environment variable are added to Path Variables with "env." prefix to...
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Readthedocs
technicalwritingproject2.readthedocs.io › en › latest › pages › setup.html
Setup — Intellij Manual 0 documentation
Insert JAVA_HOME`as the `Variable name and insert the path to your JDK directory as the Variable value. Ours was C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.8.0_121/, however yours may be different. We found this value in step 10! After inserting the values, click the Okay to finalize your input for the new environment variable.