There are a few good arguments to be made for using JetBrains’ sub-IDEs instead of using plugins for the mothership IntelliJ IDE:

1. Efficiency: fewer plugins are loaded, so the app uses less memory and starts up faster.
2. Ease of setup: Project setup is optimized in the sub-IDEs. For example, in RubyMine, you only have to choose a folder with a Rails project in it, whereas in IntelliJ you have to also set up an SDK environment and create a project file.
3. Stability: Occasionally an enhancement to IntelliJ will break a major plugin. 10.5 broke compatibility with the RubyMine plugin, because the plugin was slightly behind schedule, and the issue wasn’t resolved for ten days.

Of course there are downsides as well: you save some money by only using IntelliJ if you plan on developing in many different languages. It would be nice if JetBrains would offer an “everything bundle” with a price similar to the IntelliJ license.

However, one would think that the biggest downside is that you have to do a lot of work to keep the applications in sync with your color scheme choices and keymap preferences. Thankfully, there is a native solution to this problem! You can download the IntelliJ Configuration Server Plugin from the plugins repository.

The name may be misleading, but the description states rather more clearly that the plugin can synchronize settings “between IntelliJ platform products”, that is, not just IntelliJ but RubyMine, AppCode, and so on. It will also synchronize settings between multiple computers, which is handy if you use a laptop as a secondary machine or want to bring work home.

To use the plugin you must first create an account here:

http://account.jetbrains.com/Index.action

This account is not the same as the one you may be using for the YouTrack bug reporter in the support section of their site.

Choose the IDE that has the settings you want to share among your other products and computers and activate the plugin in that program first. I highly recommend you backup your preferences first, because you do not really have any control over how the plugin merges your settings.

For example, I had a customized theme in AppCode that I didn’t want to be overwritten so I copied it to the desktop. You can find the preference files in ~/Library/Preferences/appName

Then activate the plugin in all of your remaining apps.

Overwriting the server with your local backup is a bit tricky. IntelliJ gives priority to the versions held on the server, so simply dragging your preference file into the preferences folder will do nothing. The preference will be immediately overwritten by the server version again. In the case of the color scheme, the secret is to go to the color scheme preference pane and delete the scheme in question. That will delete it on the server. Then you can drag the backed up color scheme into the colors folder in your preferences library, restart the app, and reselect the color scheme. It will be uploaded to the the server and then synced down to your other apps.

Otherwise, importing preferences normally should update the server. I’m not sure why I like dragging the color theme XMLs around manually, but I do. I guess it’s a psychological phenomenon.