Developing Qt applications with CLion (original) (raw)
May 26, 2025 by Bruno Vunderl | Comments
Developing with Qt is becoming even more accessible across your favourite tools and editors. We want you to stay focused on your work, in the tooling you’re most comfortable with – be it Qt Creator, CLion, Visual Studio Code, or even a simple text editor such as Vim. That’s why we’d love to show you how you can develop your Qt projects in CLion.
Have you already tried developing your Qt applications using CLion? The IDE is now available for free to students, open-source contributors, and non-commercial users.
For quite a while now, official Qt and QML plugins for CLion have been bundled with the CLion installer. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights!
Using CLion Qt plugin
CLion supports Qt project development at any complexity level, offering everything from intelligent code writing features to powerful debugging functionality. You can import a pure Qt project directly, create a CMake-based Qt project from scratch, or open a Qt project using the compilation database option.
Code completition
CLion’s code completion helps you code faster by completing Qt-specific variables, functions, and other symbols, as well as full lines of code. With the AI Assistant plugin enabled, you can also harness the power of multiline code completion.
Qt renderers in the debugger
CLion supports Qt renderers that allow you to view variables, such as QList, QString, or QByteArray, in a human-readable form when debugging Qt applications.
To learn more about working with a Qt project in CLion and the features available, read the documentation.
Getting started
After installing CLion and activating a license, you can create a new Qt project or open an existing one.
Create a new project
- From the CLion Welcome screen, click New Project.
- Select a Qt project template from the left – Qt Console Executable or Qt Widgets Executable. You can then specify your project location, preferred language, and Qt version, or keep the default settings.
- Click Create. The demo Qt project will open.
You can then try to build or debug the project. To learn about the basic functionality of CLion, read the quick start guide.
Open an existing Qt project
To demonstrate, we’ll open audiorecorder, one of the example projects shipped with Qt 6.8.2.
- From the CLion Welcome screen, click Open.
You’ll see the Open Project Wizard dialog with a CMake profile automatically configured for your project.
Your project will open and will be ready for you to work on.
To run the program, click the green Run button on the main toolbar.
You can then interact directly with its GUI. For example, try adjusting settings or recording audio.
Give it a try
You can download CLion with the new free license as a standalone version, via Toolbox App, or as a snap package if you’re using Ubuntu.
If you have any ideas, feature requests, or feedback regarding the Qt integration in the IDE, feel free to share them in CLion’s issue tracker.
CLion licensing
CLion offers several subscription plans, including a paid license for commercial development and a recently introduced free license for non-commercial use. The latter allows you to create Qt projects for learning, open-source contributions, or personal purposes without financial barriers. The main goal is to make the IDE more accessible to people like students, hobbyists, and open-source developers.
To get the free license, you can select the Non-commercial use option when starting CLion or deactivate an existing license in the IDE. Note that only CLion 2025.1.1 and later versions support this free license.
Read the CLion team’s blog post to learn more about the reasons for this update, eligibility, and answers to common questions about the new licensing structure.