Clean up the user interface for coding or screencasting in PhpStorm

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After you install PhpStorm, the interface contains quite a few elements: sidebars, multiple open files, a navigation bar, a toolbar, a status bar, and browser pop-ups. Let’s remove the distractions so you can focus on your code or create cleaner screencasts.

Open View -> Appearance. Disable Toolbar to remove the large bar at the top, and disable Navigation Bar to remove the second bar below it.

The main Project sidebar is usually the most useful tool window. If you rarely use Structure or Favorites, remove those tabs as well by opening View -> Appearance -> Tool Window Bars.

Finally, open View -> Appearance -> Status Bar and disable the status bar at the bottom. The editor now has much less visual noise.

You can also use your operating system’s window management tools to give PhpStorm more space. On Windows, use a window manager to arrange PhpStorm and other applications on the screen. On macOS, use the green window button to enter full-screen mode or tile PhpStorm beside another window. In full-screen mode, the application title bar disappears until you move the pointer to the top of the screen. macOS Spaces also lets you organize applications into separate workspaces.

If you have many files open, PhpStorm may place the tabs across multiple rows. To keep them on one row, open Preferences -> Editor -> General -> Editor Tabs, enable Show tabs in one row, and click OK.

This keeps all the tabs in a single row and gives the active file more room on the screen.

PhpStorm can also display a browser preview when you hover over a file. Disable it by opening Preferences -> Tools -> Web Browsers and clearing the option that enables the browser pop-up for HTML files. The browser definitions at the top can remain enabled; you only need to disable the pop-up option. Click OK, and the preview no longer appears while you move the pointer over files.

A blinking caret can also be distracting, especially in a screencast. Open Preferences -> Editor -> General -> Appearance and clear Caret blinking. Click OK to use a solid caret instead.

You can optionally enable the block caret if you prefer a solid rectangle rather than a single line.

Large PHP, XML, and HTML files can introduce another problem. Long lines extend beyond the edge of the editor, forcing you to scroll horizontally and making it difficult to see where the code begins and ends.

To wrap these lines, open Preferences -> Editor -> General and find the Soft Wraps section. Enable Soft-wrap these files and append ; *.php; *.xml; *.html to the existing patterns, so the field reads:

*.md; *.txt; *.rst; *.adoc; *.php; *.xml; *.html

Click OK. PhpStorm now wraps long lines for these file types so the content remains visible in the editor. Small arrow markers show where a wrapped line continues.

With the toolbar, navigation bar, tool window tabs, status bar, browser pop-ups, caret blinking, extra tab rows, and horizontal scrolling under control, the PhpStorm interface is much cleaner and easier to use while you code or record a screencast.