There is an option, but it’s not exposed in the preferences dialog. Add or modify the following line inside the <component name="EditorSettings"> section in your editor.xml file and restart IntelliJ IDEA:
<option name="SHOW_INTENTION_BULB" value="false" />
The file is located at:
- On OS X:
~/Library/Preferences/<PRODUCT>/options/editor.xml - On Windows:
%HOMEPATH%\.<PRODUCT>\config\options\editor.xml - On Linux:
~/.<PRODUCT>/config/options/editor.xml
where <PRODUCT> is e.g. IdeaIC13, IntelliJIdea13, PyCharm30 or AndroidStudio.
This will prevent the lightbulb from ever being shown. This solution came up in the discussion of an issue about this problem.