Why is IntelliJ 13 IDEA so slow after upgrading fr

Question

While using IntelliJ 13 ultimate edition for a week, it just seems really slow.

First of all, the whole IDE stops for a second or so every once in a while. The Java editor's auto complete is really slow compared to 12 version.

I have not changed anything from the default settings other than using a Dracula theme.

It seems that this is not a problem of my own. Many people suggested setting the heap size higher than default, or clearing the cache, but I have not checked or tested on these suggestion. Do I need to change some setting to improve the new version's performance?

Answer 1

I had a similar problem. In that case it was the Subversion plug-in. (Mac Mavericks, SVN version 1.7.10) Once I disabled this IntelliJ became useable again.

Got this from jstack:

"Change List Updater" daemon prio=2 tid=10df3f000 nid=0x12a421000 runnable [12a41f000]
   java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE
    at java.util.Collections.unmodifiableList(Collections.java:1131)
    at com.intellij.execution.configurations.ParametersList.getList(ParametersList.java:88)
    at com.intellij.execution.configurations.GeneralCommandLine.getCommandLineString(GeneralCommandLine.java:210)
    at com.intellij.execution.configurations.GeneralCommandLine.getCommandLineString(GeneralCommandLine.java:189)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.CommandExecutor.createProcessHandler(CommandExecutor.java:186)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.CommandExecutor.start(CommandExecutor.java:137)
    - locked <76afcdfb8> (a java.lang.Object)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.CommandExecutor.run(CommandExecutor.java:262)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.CommandRuntime.runWithAuthenticationAttempt(CommandRuntime.java:62)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.CommandUtil.execute(CommandUtil.java:206)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.CommandUtil.execute(CommandUtil.java:189)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.SvnCommandLineInfoClient.execute(SvnCommandLineInfoClient.java:120)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.SvnCommandLineInfoClient.issueCommand(SvnCommandLineInfoClient.java:104)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.SvnCommandLineInfoClient.doInfo(SvnCommandLineInfoClient.java:90)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.SvnCommandLineInfoClient.doInfo(SvnCommandLineInfoClient.java:232)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.SvnCommandLineStatusClient.doStatus(SvnCommandLineStatusClient.java:106)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.SvnRecursiveStatusWalker.go(SvnRecursiveStatusWalker.java:79)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.SvnChangeProvider.getChanges(SvnChangeProvider.java:89)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.ChangeListManagerImpl.a(ChangeListManagerImpl.java:686)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.ChangeListManagerImpl.a(ChangeListManagerImpl.java:596)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.ChangeListManagerImpl.d(ChangeListManagerImpl.java:480)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.ChangeListManagerImpl.access$1100(ChangeListManagerImpl.java:71)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.ChangeListManagerImpl$ActualUpdater.run(ChangeListManagerImpl.java:387)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.UpdateRequestsQueue$MyRunnable.run(UpdateRequestsQueue.java:260)
    at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:439)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
    at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$301(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:98)
    at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:206)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:895)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:918)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:695)

---

other run:

"Change List Updater" daemon prio=2 tid=124556000 nid=0x129c7a000 runnable [129c78000]
   java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE
    at java.io.UnixFileSystem.getBooleanAttributes0(Native Method)
    at java.io.UnixFileSystem.getBooleanAttributes(UnixFileSystem.java:228)
    at java.io.File.exists(File.java:733)
    at org.apache.xerces.parsers.SecuritySupport$7.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at org.apache.xerces.parsers.SecuritySupport.getFileExists(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.parsers.ObjectFactory.createObject(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.parsers.ObjectFactory.createObject(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser.<init>(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser.<init>(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.<init>(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl.<init>(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserFactoryImpl.newSAXParser(Unknown Source)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.SvnCommandLineStatusClient.parseResult(SvnCommandLineStatusClient.java:138)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.commandLine.SvnCommandLineStatusClient.doStatus(SvnCommandLineStatusClient.java:118)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.SvnRecursiveStatusWalker.go(SvnRecursiveStatusWalker.java:79)
    at org.jetbrains.idea.svn.SvnChangeProvider.getChanges(SvnChangeProvider.java:89)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.ChangeListManagerImpl.a(ChangeListManagerImpl.java:686)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.ChangeListManagerImpl.a(ChangeListManagerImpl.java:596)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.ChangeListManagerImpl.d(ChangeListManagerImpl.java:480)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.ChangeListManagerImpl.access$1100(ChangeListManagerImpl.java:71)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.ChangeListManagerImpl$ActualUpdater.run(ChangeListManagerImpl.java:387)
    at com.intellij.openapi.vcs.changes.UpdateRequestsQueue$MyRunnable.run(UpdateRequestsQueue.java:260)
    at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:439)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
    at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$301(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:98)
    at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:206)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:895)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:918)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:695)

Answer 2

I have solved my performance issues by switching to the 32 bit mode. It seems to be related with the JRE that IntelliJ runs with. It ships with a 32 bit 1.7 JRE which is used when starting idea.exe. If you start idea64.exe, it uses a 64 bit JRE installed on the system. In my case this was a 1.6 JDK (the one I use for development). This caused IntelliJ to be nearly unusable.

After installing a proper 64 bit 1.7 JDK everything was fine with the 64 bit mode, too.

See the answer on the IntelliJ Support web site.

Answer 3

I had the same problem with slowness in IntelliJ 13 after upgrading from 12. What worked for me was editing the idea64.vmoptions in the bin folder and setting the max heap to 8 GB (was 512 MB) and the Max PermGen to at least 1GB (was 300MB).Example below:

-Xms128m
-Xmx8192m
-XX:MaxPermSize=1024m

Upon restart it was much faster.

On a Mac, this file is located in this path: /Users/yourusername/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdea13/idea.vmoptions

For IntelliJ 14 or 15 on Mac /Applications/IntelliJ IDEA 14.app/Contents/bin/idea.vmoptions

For IntelliJ 2016, 2017, or Higher on Mac /Applications/IntelliJ IDEA.app/Contents/bin/idea.vmoptions

IntelliJ's 2017 update seems to roll this change back, so you may need to re-apply it after updating.

On Ubuntu Linux, this file is located in this path relative to the install directory:

idea-IU-135.475/bin/idea64.vmoptions

and for 2016.2:

 ~/.IdeaIC2016.2/idea64.vmoptions

On Windows 10 (Community edition shown here) these files are located in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\JetBrains\IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 2016.1.3\bin\idea64.exe.vmoptions

Answer 4

I've been using 13 since early beta and I have no problems at all. Perhaps it's your specific settings. Maybe your project has grown over time and the memory you gave Idea originally isn't sufficient for it now? Try giving Idea more memory to work with: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/increasing-memory-heap.html (instructions on how to do that).

Answer 5

My particular case (Mac) was I edited the info.plist to use java 1.7* (for whatever reason), and it ran like an absolute dog.

Changed back to 1.6* and installed java 1.6, and it was fast.

Answer 6

I noticed that disabling many of the plug ins really helps speed up IntelliJ. For example, I am not developing Android Applications. Turning the plugins related to Android development off speed up load time and makes the program run much smoother on my machine.