Install the Laravel IDE Helper for every project?

I'm not aware of an automated way of doing it but you can fork the laravel/laravel package and install IDE Helper and use your own package to create all your future projects from. Using Satis should help you use your own package without publishing it to Packagest. Just be warned you will need to update your fork when Laravel does updates or you will be using an old version of Laravel.

Alternatively you could try extend the Laravel installer you would need to customise the the new command to run the command composer require barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper updated the providers array in config/app.php and add the php artisan ide-helper:generate command to scripts.post-update-cmd in the composer.json file.

PhpStorm will pickup most code completion hints, you don't need IDE helper for completions however you will do need it if you want completions for the build in facades or the ones you will build or completion for your model attributes etc.

I would include in in every project if I were you and as mentioned by corez64 I would add it to the the composer commands that run after update so this gets updated/regenerated every time you update the rest of your packages. I would also include The command to generate models helpers like below

        "postw-update-cmd": [
            "php artisan clear-compiled",
            "php artisan optimize",
            "php artisan ide-helper:generate",
            "php artisan ide-helper:models -N"
        ],

Thank you all! I will try to automate that.

You might also want to add php artisan ide-helper:meta for container instances

In PhpStrom the best approach is, to use file watcher. Then you can save the composer hooks. If you are using composer hooks, your ide-helper gets only updated if you install/update your composer packages. Use a file watcher, that run that commands if a php file changes. It is fast and you are always up to date. I suggest as the others said to use ide-helper:generate and ide-helper:meta. I am not a big fan of the model ide-helper. But it is up to you.

@unitedworx: in your snippet you added the ide-helper commands after php artisan optimize while the GitHub README (https://github.com/barryvdh/laravel-ide-helper) puts php artisan optimizelast. Does the order matter?

@StefanBauer: Any chance you could do a screenshot of such a watcher config? What filters are you using to avoid it from being triggered unnecessary?

@thomthom does not make a difference what order you add them. IDE helper simply adds some code to help IDEs show propers autocompletion. does not have any effect on the actual app or any optimization done via the artisan command