Autocompletion of @author in Intellij

You can work around that via a Live Template.

Go to Settings -> Editor -> Live Templates, click the Plus Icon Button (on the right).

In the "Abbreviation" field, enter the string that should activate the template (e.g. @a), and in the "Template Text" area enter the string to complete (e.g. @author - My Name). Set the "Applicable context" to Java (Comments only maybe) and set a key to complete (on the right).

I tested it and it works fine, however IntelliJ seems to prefer the inbuild templates, so "@a + Tab" only completes "author". Setting the completion key to Space worked however.

To change the user name that is automatically inserted via the File Templates (when creating a class for example), can be changed by adding

-Duser.name=Your name

to the idea.exe.vmoptions or idea64.exe.vmoptions (depending on your version) in the IntelliJ/bin directory.

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Restart IntelliJ


Check Enable Live Templates and leave the cursor at the position desired and click Apply then OK

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One more option, not exactly what you asked, but can be useful:

Go to Settings -> Editor -> File and code templates -> Includes tab (on the right). There is a template header for the new files, you can use the username here:

/**
 * @author myname
 */

For system username use:

/**
 * @author ${USER}
 */

Screen shot from Intellij 2016.02