PHPStorm exceptionally slow while editing Javascript

Question

I'm using PHPStorm (5.0) as PHP IDE, but I'm busy building some frontend stuff with Javascript at the moment. The problem is: PHPStorm gets very slow. It uses all 494M of memory while editing the Javascript file. I don't have any active files other than my Javascript file. The file itself is only 191 lines long.

• I invalidated the caches;
• I restarted PHPStorm / my computer;
• I turned off all Javascript inspections.

Is there anything I can do to speed things up?

Answer 1

If you're running a project with an exceptionally large code base, the performance of the IDE can really chug because by default it watches all the files in all subdirectories of your loaded project.

Generally, a large code base will not require watchers on a good portion of the files. You can improve performance by going to File/Settings/Project/Directories and excluding any folders you do not need to watch/search within.

If you do need to search within those files, you get the option to include excluded directories and search again anyway.

Also, disabling any plugins you aren't using can help improve performance as well, but not as much as the directories thing.