I am playing around with phpstorm and somehow I activated version control. I don't need it. Now all my tabs are different: orange text on gray background. All files in the file view are orange. How do I disable version control?
6 Answers
Go to Settings -> Version Control and remove the folder from which you would like to remove version control tracking (coloring tabs etc.) It will naturally not remove version control from your project (as in deleting the .git/ folder for instance).

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All that does is make them unregistered roots, now I get notices for unregistered roots. – M H Sep 29 '16 at 03:32
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1This works for version 2017.1.2 too. Additionally to remove 'unregistered roots' notification, go to Application & Behaviour -> Notifications and uncheck 'Vcs Notifications'. Now it's all happy. – Andrew Stalker Apr 12 '18 at 08:08
The ultimate way is to disable all version control plugins (under Settings -> Plugins
): CVS Integration, Git Integration, GitHub, hg4idea, Perforce Integration, Subversion Integration. After restarting PhpStorm Settings -> Version Control
tab will be gone.
Note that this will disable version control for all of your projects.

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Nice, thank you. This is the answer if you use another program for version contral and don't want your IDE getting in the way. – John.M Nov 02 '19 at 05:14
You can just remove vcs.xml
from .idea
folder and then restart PhpStorm

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3This should NOT be marked as the correct answer. Any time PhpStorm is restarted, it will re-generate vcs.xml and the problem instantly reappears. You must de-register the project from within PhpStorm by going to Settings > Version Control and removing the project from the list, as others have said. – Adam Friedman Dec 30 '15 at 17:49
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It was working for me in PhpStorm 7. I can't give any guarantee for the new versions. – weivall Feb 13 '16 at 19:08
In phpStorm 2022.1.3+, go to
Preferences > Version Control > Directory Mappings
Then remove the directories you don't want to watch, as Greg suggested.

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Go to Settings -> Version Control and remove the folder from which you would liek to remove version control.
I have not enough reputation to +1 Greg's answer or comment, but... for those who are interrested : the same goes for Webstorm.

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I had this problem and I used from 2 of notes in these answers in these page together.
As Greg has mentioned in one of replies, your git repository is in .git
sub directory inside directory that you want to manage it with version control system. When you define a git repository, PhpStorm automatically generate it and with creating this sub directory, it adds a file for handling mapping between itself and version control system. It calls vcs.xml
and it's located in .idea
sub directory.
It's not enough to remove only .git
directory. When you remove .git
, you will get an error in PhpStorm every time that you open your project due to not matching vcs.xml
for mapping between PhpStorm and git repository of your project. So after removing .git
directory, you must also remove vcs.xml
files from .idea
and now you won't have any error or warning in your PhpStorm.
It doesn't need to restart PhpStorm at all and after this, colors of all of files that was mentioned in questions return to normal colors in PhpStorm.

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There is an answer in here somewhere, but it needs a little editing. Try to break up this wall of text so it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. – Nov 10 '17 at 19:01