Redundant Visibility Modifier

kotlin.redundant_visibility

Severity

info

Remediation Complexity

medium

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

medium

Resource

Code Smell

Language

Kotlin

Description

Reports class, function, and property declarations that carry an explicit public visibility modifier.

public is the default visibility in Kotlin for top-level and class-member declarations. Writing it explicitly provides no additional information and introduces visual noise that can distract readers from the actual intent of the code.

Rationale

// Bad — public is the default, no need to spell it out
public class Foo {          // FLAW
    public fun bar(): Int = 0  // FLAW
    public val x: Int = 1   // FLAW
}

// Good — rely on the Kotlin default
class Foo {
    fun bar(): Int = 0
    val x: Int = 1
}

// OK — other visibility modifiers convey real information
private class Hidden
internal fun helper()
protected open fun hook()

Remediation

Remove the redundant public modifier from the declaration. The visibility remains unchanged since public is the implicit default.

References

Kotlin — Visibility modifiers