JarEditor: An IntelliJ IDEA Plugin for Directly Editing JAR Files without Extraction

IDEA’s built‑in decompiler can view class files inside a JAR but cannot edit them; traditionally one must extract, decompile, modify, recompile and re‑package, which is tedious.

The author created a simple plugin called JarEditor that allows direct editing of classes and resources inside a JAR without extraction.

After installing the plugin, a “Jar Editor” tab appears when viewing a decompiled .class file. Users can modify the decompiled source, then click Save/Compile to compile the changes and Build Jar to write the updated class back into the JAR.

The plugin also supports editing resource files, adding new files, and deleting files via right‑click context menu options “New” and “Delete”.

Compilation uses the project’s JDK; the target class version can be set, and the classpath follows the project’s dependencies. The Save/Compile action stores modified files in a temporary jar_edit directory, and Build Jar merges the incremental changes into the original JAR before cleaning up.

JarEditor requires IntelliJ IDEA 2020.3 or later and is available on the plugin marketplace; source code is hosted at https://github.com/Liubsyy/JarEditor.