This local history has saved my bacon on occasion. E.g. when I went too long without committing and something silly overwrote the file I was working on. Or because I did something silly with git. Then it is nice that there is still an independent backup elsewhere with different failure modes.
replyLike a branch on the server?
replyThat would still be in git. The local history in IntelliJ works independently of any VCS.
replyAlso I’ve had formatters botch files including changes I hadn’t committed yet. For that the local edit history is also useful.