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In huge project WebStorm (it can be other product of JetBrains) is always thinking and loading something.

This is really annoying me!

Dylan Corriveau
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Nazar Vynnytskyi
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3 Answers3

272

Here is my recipe how to speed up your lovely WebStorm:

  • Go to Preferences and do next:
    1. Appearance & Behaviour > System Settings > Updates: disable auto update
    2. Appearance & Behaviour > System Settings > Usage Statistics: Uncheck Allow sending data usage statistics to JetBrains
    3. Editor > Live Templates: disable all, leave only what you are really use
    4. Editor > Emmet: disable all emmets
    5. Editor > Intentions: I leave only: CSS, Declaration, JavaScript and Language Injection
    6. Plugins: leave only next (* - can be also disabled in case you don't need them):
      • CoffeeScript *
      • CSS Suport
      • CVS Integration
      • Git Integration
      • HTML Tool
      • IntelliLang
      • JavaScript Debugger *
      • JavaScript Intention Power Pack
      • JavaScript Support
      • NodeJS *
      • Perforce Integration
      • SASS suport *
    7. Project > Directories: Exclude all what you don't use
    8. Languages & Frameworks > JavaScript > Libraries: leave only: HTML and HTML5 / EcmaScript 5
    9. Languages & Frameworks > Compass: disable it
    10. Tools > WebBrowsers: leave only Chrome

  • Help > Edit Custom VM Options: Edit and increase usage memory pwd:

    -Xms1024m
    -Xmx1536m
    -XX:MaxPermSize=1024m
    -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=512m
    -XX:+UseCompressedOops

So the main idea is next: disable all in Preferences what you really don't use and increase memory for IDE.

blub
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Nazar Vynnytskyi
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    Editing the `/Applications/WebStorm.app/Contents/bin/idea.vmoptions` is not advisable check https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/help/tuning-webstorm.html to how to properly do it. – seenukarthi Apr 01 '15 at 10:44
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    http://jetbrains.com/webstorm/help/tuning-webstorm.html - instead edit webstorm.vmoptions over idea.vmoptions for the right effect – Eat at Joes Feb 02 '16 at 16:18
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    I would also prune "Editor > Inspections" or to stop inspecting completely, enable "Power Save Mode" from the file menu. – Eat at Joes Feb 02 '16 at 16:23
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    All tips are useful but **increasing the memory** is the crucial one. My Intellij IDEA was pretty much dying, then I increased the memory and its flying again. My project got simply too big and I didn't realize this limitation. So thanks a lot! – tobik May 26 '16 at 10:26
  • On **Windows** make sure you're using the **64 bit version** if available – Augie Gardner Dec 09 '16 at 07:16
  • How to do the second set of settings on Windows? – pal4life Mar 03 '17 at 19:56
  • it's `/Applications/WebStorm.app/Contents/bin/webstorm.vmoptions` not `/Applications/WebStorm.app/Contents/bin/idea.vmoptions` – nils petersohn Apr 11 '17 at 07:44
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    In more recent versions, simply press **Ctrl+Shift+A** for the Find Action popup and type "**Edit Custom VM Options**". It will automatically create the correct file for your machine that you can edit. – Kevin Cooper Apr 29 '17 at 19:24
  • Heads up for Windows users, if you increase the Xmx value too far and are using the 32 bit version (which is the default even on 64-bit machines because it runs faster), then Webstorm will immediately crash on startup. You can't allocate a heap bigger than 1.1 or 1.2 MB or so. Switching to 64-bit fixed that for me. Support post with further info: https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203463744-Webstorm-doesn-t-start – John O'Sullivan Jul 04 '17 at 07:10
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    In recent versions there is a drop down selection available in **Help | Edit Custom VM Options** – hdsenevi Aug 04 '17 at 02:58
  • In the last part I found the settings in `/Applications/WebStorm.app/Contents/bin/webstorm.vmoptions` not `idea.vmoptions` – Jayem Sep 01 '17 at 15:27
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    So, because I did not want to blindly apply the configuration to the Java VM mentioned at the bottom, I did some research and found out that `MaxPermSize` is no longer used (https://stackoverflow.com/a/12114284/2300759) and `UseCompressedOops` probably no longer needed (https://stackoverflow.com/a/11054851/2300759) – niklaas Oct 07 '21 at 15:43
  • Thanks guys, very useful and straightforward post. Just make sure that if your system does not have enough memory, Increasing heap use may result in using more memory for webstorm and less memory for other apps. – celoaga Nov 18 '21 at 17:09
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There is a "Power Save Mode" setting in the files menu. This will disable some syntax highlighting and stuff, but will improve the speed of any JetBrains IDE.

beruic
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5

Also check out ScriptedAlchemy's jetbrains-ide-performance github repository - and be sure to check out the updated settings in the issues. Disabling unused global symbols (search for it in the settings, it's under inspections) also seems to help.

lahwran
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gutterball
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