New IDE with Kotlin Support: Feature Overview for Developers

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New IDE with Kotlin Support: First Look

The market for Kotlin development tools has a new player. A team of enthusiasts has presented a beta version of an IDE called KodeFlow — a lightweight yet feature-rich development environment focused on multiplatform projects. We tested the new product and share our first impressions.

What does KodeFlow offer?

KodeFlow positions itself as an alternative to IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio for those seeking a faster start and lower resource consumption. Key features include:

Intelligent autocompletion — the code analyzer correctly handles coroutines, sealed classes, and extension functions, offering relevant suggestions.
Built-in Gradle and Maven support — project import takes seconds, and builds run without unnecessary dialog windows.
On-the-fly refactoring — renaming variables, extracting functions, and changing signatures work even in large files (tested on a project with 50+ classes).
Terminal and debugger — built-in terminal with Git support and a debugger with breakpoints, watch variables, and a call stack.
Plugins for Android and KMP — separate extensions for working with Android SDK and Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP).

First impressions

Installation went smoothly: the distribution weighs only 280 MB (compared to 1.5 GB for IntelliJ IDEA). The interface is minimalist — dark theme by default, toolbars are hidden but easily customizable. When opening a project with Kotlin + Compose Multiplatform, the IDE immediately offered to install JDK 17 and the Compose plugin — all in one click.

Performance was impressive: on a laptop with 8 GB RAM and an Intel i5, the environment launched in 12 seconds, and indexing a project of 1000 files took about 30 seconds. Compared to Android Studio, this is almost twice as fast.

However, there are drawbacks. The beta version lacks support for some popular plugins (e.g., for working with Docker and Kubernetes). Also, a visual editor for Jetpack Compose is not implemented — only preview via the terminal.

Who is KodeFlow suitable for?

The new IDE will be useful for:

Beginner Kotlin developers who want to quickly try the language without setting up bulky environments.
KMP specialists who need a lightweight environment for writing shared code.
Those working on older hardware who cannot afford heavy IDEs.

The beta version can be downloaded from the project's official website (currently only for Windows and Linux). The stable release is expected at the end of the year with expanded support for the Kotlin language and ecosystem.

Stay tuned for updates on PythonLib — we will continue testing new tools for developers.