How to speed up WebStorm

Question

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

This is really annoying me!

Solution 1

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.

Solution 2

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.

Solution 3

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.

Comments

[Karthikeyan]

Editing the /Applications/WebStorm.app/Contents/bin/idea.vmoptions is not advisable check jetbrains.com/webstorm/help/tuning-webstorm.html to how to properly do it.

[Eat at Joes]

jetbrains.com/webstorm/help/tuning-webstorm.html - instead edit webstorm.vmoptions over idea.vmoptions for the right effect

[Eat at Joes]

I would also prune "Editor > Inspections" or to stop inspecting completely, enable "Power Save Mode" from the file menu.

[tobik]

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!

[Augie Gardner]

On Windows make sure you're using the 64 bit version if available

[pal4life]

How to do the second set of settings on Windows?

[nils petersohn]

it's /Applications/WebStorm.app/Contents/bin/webstorm.vmoptions not /Applications/WebStorm.app/Contents/bin/idea.vmoptions

[Kevin Cooper]

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.

[John O'Sullivan]

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: intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/…

[hdsenevi]

In recent versions there is a drop down selection available in Help | Edit Custom VM Options

[Jayem]

In the last part I found the settings in /Applications/WebStorm.app/Contents/bin/webstorm.vmoptions not idea.vmoptions

[niklaas]

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 (stackoverflow.com/a/12114284/2300759) and UseCompressedOops probably no longer needed (stackoverflow.com/a/11054851/2300759)

[celoaga]

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.