What is the purpose of the 'public' keyword in Java methods?

The public keyword in Java methods is an access modifier that determines the visibility of the method. When a method is declared as public, it means that the method can be accessed from any other class in any package. This is useful for methods that need to be available to other parts of the program or to external classes.

Here’s a quick example:

public class Example {
    public void displayMessage() {
        System.out.println("Hello, World!");
    }
}

In this example, the displayMessage method is public, so it can be called from any other class that has access to the Example class.