Antivirus Impact on Build Speed

Some antivirus software can interfere with the IDE build process, causing builds to run dramatically slower. When you run a build in the IDE, many class files are created on your computer. If your antivirus software has real-time scanning enabled, the antivirus can force the build process to halt each time a file is created while the antivirus scans that file.

If you’re using Windows Defender, the IDE automatically checks whether you have real-time scanning enabled, and whether the scanning is configured to process directories where the IDE writes a lot of files.

The IDE offers you a possibility to exclude those directories from scanning automatically (this feature is available in 2019.2+ IDE versions).

If you prefer to perform the necessary configuration manually, you can do so by following these steps:

• Click the Start button
• Type “Windows Security”
• Click on “Virus and threat protection”
• Click on “Manage settings” under “Virus & threat protection settings”
• Scroll down if needed, and then click on “Add or remove exclusions”
• For every folder shown in the notification, press the + button, select “Folder” from the menu, and select the folder.

If you’re using a different anti-virus product, you may still be impacted by the problem, but there is no possibility to detect or correct this automatically. If you’re experiencing poor build performance, please follow the instructions of your anti-virus product to exclude the following directories from real-time scanning:

• The directory of your project
• The whole JetBrains directory for caches and settings: 
  Windows: 
  

  %APPDATA%\JetBrains
  %LOCALAPPDATA%\JetBrains

  Linux: 
  

   ~/.config/JetBrains
  ~/.cache/JetBrains
  

  macOS
  

  ~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains
  ~/Library/Caches/JetBrains

  
  Alternatively, you may add the directory used by an exact version of IDE to store settings and caches. It should be modified with every IDE update, though.
• The Gradle cache directory (%USERPROFILE%\.gradle)

We also recommend excluding the IDE process from the antivirus to improve the startup performance.

Caution: To ensure that your computer is safe from malicious software, you should not completely disable real-time scanning or your antivirus software.

Note: IDE runs powershell.exe process to detect if Windows Defender is active and to exclude the folders from the antivirus. This may trigger suspicious activity detection by some other antivirus tools like TrendMicro. This behavior is by design and the corresponding source code can be found on GitHub. It's safe to permit running PowerShell from the IDE.