PHPStorm consume high memory on Mac

Hello,

Memory consumption usually depends on several things like code base size and complexity, number of plugins enabled and others.

How large is your project? How large are the files? Do you use several languages in a single file?

Where are your project files located - on a local disk or on a remote server?

Did you try to disable the plugins you don't use in PhpStorm | Preferences | Plugins?

It's also worth to clear the caches that could have been corrupted and cause the performance issues. Could you run File > Invalidate Caches/Restart > Invalidate and Restart, please, and then check if the issue reoccurs?

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. I have tried disable several plugins that I don't need. I also ran the Invalidate and Restart. It looks like it helps a bit. When I quite/re-open the PHPStorm, the initial memory consumption is reduced around 150MB. After working for while (around 40 minutes), the memory consumption increases from 1.1G to 1.3G. 

My project folder is not big. It is just about 215MB which contains php, sql, js, css, html, and image files. But image files are few, only around 10MB. The number of total files are 14,060. The whole project is siting inside Mac flash drive.

Any other suggestions? or This amount of memory is normally PHPStorm uses?

Thanks and Merry Christmas!

Interestingly I'm running PHPStorm 2016.3.2 on a Windows 10 PC. I'm not using any plugins beyond those standardly installed.

I've had problems with the latest build using increasing memory quantities and eventually killing my PC.

I've now installed JDK 1.8 64 bit and swapped to using the 64 bit version. 

I changed the value of -Xmx to 4096M.

If I run PHPStorm and do a diagram of the tables in my database I can watch the PC without touching it and see the memory usage go from 500 of 4096 to 1500 of 4096 in a few minutes. If left running, without doing anything the PC will crash.

Other than this the PC is fine, so it appears to me that there is some kind of bad memory leak in the latest build?

Thanks and Merry Christmas,

Chris.

> Any other suggestions? or This amount of memory is normally PHPStorm uses?

Well, for a project of 215MB it is normal, unfortunately.

> Other than this the PC is fine, so it appears to me that there is some kind of bad memory leak in the latest build?

Not that we know about. Please upload the IDE log somewhere and let us take a look.

@Eugene and @Vladimir : i have the same setup as Daniel, 

Ever since installing the latest phpstorm, i notice that the software comes to a crawl every 2 hours or so of working with it, forcing me to 'reindex and restart' to regain a semblance of performance. Whether i am typing in your preferences, a text file, or a code file, the same can be observed (i would estimate 250 ms per keystroke). This is making the Jetbrains product close to 'unusable' 

• Not a memory issue (JVM has tons of unallocated heap, and the process has 4-5 gb available from the OS. 
• New behaviour since latest update
• I also use AppCode and WebStorm of the same lineage with no issue.
• When this happens, OSX is reporting 20% cpu , one core, for the PhpStorm process.

Is there a current bug report on a similar issue ?

project summary (one of 2 current projects, the small one ... i loathe the idea of returning to my other project) : 

PhpStorm config

PhpStorm 2016.3.2
Build #PS-163.10504.2, built on December 20, 2016
Licensed to <yvesleborg@redacted.com>
You have perpetual fallback license for this version
Subscription is active until March 17, 2018
JRE: 1.8.0_112-release-408-b6 x86_64
JVM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o

puter stuff

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name: MacBook Pro

  Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,3

  Processor Name: Intel Core i7

  Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz

  Number of Processors: 1

  Total Number of Cores: 4

  L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

  L3 Cache: 6 MB

  Memory: 16 GB

  Boot ROM Version: MBP112.0138.B17

  SMC Version (system): 2.19f12

  Serial Number (system): <redacted>

  Hardware UUID: <redacted>

A first thing to try would be checking if you see this issue on the latest EAP build: https://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/PhpStorm/PhpStorm+Early+Access+Program
If you do, please upload the IDE log after PhpStorm restart somewhere.
Also, please capture a CPU performance snapshot (about a minute long) when you experience this 250ms typing delay and let us take a look.

@Vladimir ... ok, downloaded and up. I will report back here one way or the other.  When i checked for updates in the current release, it told me i had the latest, usually it tells me about available EAP's.

FWIW - I am finding PHPStorm to steadily consume more memory over time, example:

Turn on Macbook with no apps running, load my project, memory consumption is ~580MB

After a week of not shutting down the app, closing laptop lid before leaving the office, Friday's usage is 1-2GB

It's the caches being warmed up.
You can enable Preferences | Appearance & Behavior | Appearance | Show memory indicator, and click the indicator whenever you feel that PhpStorm consumes too much memory, and the Java heap will be purged up to the startup state.

Exact same issue here. Why is this issue marked as answered? There's no satisfactory answer in this thread and if my ide is 'working in intended' when it's chugging 2.5 gb of RAM then my ide is now very broken and must be abandoned... whats Eclipse like nowadays?

Hi Price84,

So far as I know, there is no solution to it. I have upgraded to 2017.1, but it performs same at memory usage. I have tried Netbeans as well. It has same issue. I am not sure about the Eclipse. Initially I always opened the MySQL workbench and PHPStore on Mac. But both of them consume high memory which crashed my Mac a lot. Therefore, I posted here to see whether there is any method to solve it. Unfortunately, it looks like there is no optimal solutions. Then I moved my Workbench to VMWARE (Win10). Now even PHPStorm is still using that much memory, at least my Mac won't crash due to the memory issue. I am not familiar with operating system. But PHPStorm cost way less memory in Windows than Mac. I don't know why.

Hi Daniel

I am currently running (as i type this) WebStorm, PhpStorm, AppCode and Android Studio concurrently, on a MacBook Pro 2015 with 16Gb RAM and SSD device. Although I can see they collectively gobble up 8Gb of memory, I still get excellent performance from my box (Has also 2 apaches, Mysql, php-fpm running).  So yes, memory is high, but maybe your crashiness or other inconveniences originate from other aspects of your computer's configuration.

It is also necessary to remember that Java usually allocates more memory for its internal needs.

Enabling File | Settings | Appearance & Behavior | Appearance > "Show memory indicator" will display the actual amount of memory that PhpStorm uses in the bottom right corner of the IDE window.

For example, my PhpStorm Workshop project with some additional test files and configurations consumes about 100-120 MB by indicator, but task manager reports 600 MB of usage and that's reasonable.

For the user it does not matter if java vm is consuming this memory or phpstorm. It's too much anyway. See: I have only 8 gigs of RAM - none of the apps is using very much memory but sadly 8 gigs are full. every hour I have to check what consumes so much memory, what I don't need anymore? hum chrome requires 250mb? no wait that's only one thread, there are 20 and they need between 60 and 250 MB - ok lets close some tabs.. that's not really efficient working you understand?

the problem nowadays is that almost no developer is thinking about: do I really need that much memory? is it worth to read from disk instead of consuming memory? usually it is: one memory of data? no problem I store it in the memory (or redis).. vektor graphics? hm lets find a library that makes a high definition pixmap from it and store it uncompressed to the memory - it's the fastest possible when you have to redraw it...

I know it's not always easy and phpstorm is a great tool that is reacting mostly very fast and has a nice workflow. I like it and when my company does not pay - i pay. But my problem is: xmx is set to 750 MB why php storm needs then 2 gigs of ram and shows 150 MB memory usage in the memory indicator? you can imagine: clicking on the memory indicator will not have an effect on the memory consumption... what else to do without restarting phpstorm to have lower memory consumption?

don't get me wrong: I don't want my pc to use only 4 gigs from 8 gigs of ram. when the pc begins to use swap it begins to get ugly and after 4 - 6 hours of work (chrome, phpstorm, cross ftp, slack, evolution) the 8 gigs are full. and honestly: phpstorm and chrome are the only apps I don't want to quick to continue working but they need so much memory...

> For the user it does not matter if java vm is consuming this memory or phpstorm. It's too much anyway

Well, that's true. But unfortunately it's the limitation we have, the price we're paying for the IDEs being cross-platform.

Just in case, here's the official position.
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-103770

In your case, the only thing that could help is reducing Xmx to 512, but this may affect performance.

Hi there,

I´m running into the same issues. As well on my MacBook Pro and on my iMacPro. When i leave my mac in standby over night and get back in the morging, i alwaysget a memory warning or the machine is craching. I think this should not happen at all.

@Eugene Morozov

> Well, that's true. But unfortunately it's the limitation we have, the price we're paying for the IDEs being cross-platform.

That´s not 100% correct. For the last week i switched to the atom IDE. Since then I have no memory issues at all with much more Plugins installed then on PHPStorm. And if I´m right atom is cross platform, too. In these days it´s not ok if the price of cross platform are memory leaks. Further more is atom a free IDE. So I guess I´ll stick with this until the leaks are fixed.

@Thflori

You´re Right. I don´t care about how much memory I need. If I´m working for my customers and tell them "I can´t develop your Webapp because of a buggy IDE" I`ll get kicked out. To display the used memory is a nice feature but not a fix for a memory leak.

Last but not least. Please don´t understand me wrong. I love Web / PHPStorm. But I do need a working IDE which I can count on as a freelance software developer. So I hope the dev brain @ jetbrains will solve this and I can switch back to this awesome IDE.

Have a nice day

Nathalie

@Eugene Morozov

> Well, that's true. But unfortunately it's the limitation we have, the price we're paying for the IDEs being cross-platform.

actually, that is the price your customers are paying for Jetbrains making the choice to impose its design choices onto them. Eventually, you should be concerned that they will chose to pay it elsewhere, hopefully less, but at least have an IDE they can use professionally. The only one of your IDE's I have found no alternative yet is AppCode (but i am willing to grudgingly go back to exCode). When that day comes, you may find that Jetbrains has lost me (and my staff). 

My main concern here is that one is being forced to handle environmental memory settings manually.

I have no idea what those configurations are and how to properly manage them, and actually I don't want to have to care either.

I believe this is the biggest drawback of *Storm.

I want to spend my time developing my stuff rather than reading up on the Java VM and how I should configure how much memory some application should be able to use. It's very frustrating that the IDE often gets unusable because of these memory clogging issues.

I really love PHPStorm but this same issue is driving me crazy and actually getting in the way of coding. I am now forced to consider switching to VSCode.

I wish there could be a fix for this, it is a shame for a great product like PHPStorm to die because of this issue. Hopefully I might not have the need to switch...

Currently using PHPStorm 2020.3.1. Only 1 Laravel project is open.

Lyndonjohn

Please open Help > Edit Custom VM Options and check the -Xmx value you have in that file.

To elaborate on this: IDE modifies Xmx value automatically based on total RAM available. When IDE is launched it automatically reserves this amount of memory even if it needs a small portion of it. There's also an additional memory overhead being used by Java itself, you can read more about it here: https://plumbr.io/blog/memory-leaks/why-does-my-java-process-consume-more-memory-than-xmx

IDE won't automatically free up the memory it reserved on a launch, unfortunately. You can adjust the amount it can reserve by editing the -Xmx value.

If this was an unfortunate competition, I think I win.
Not only is this (picture below - Activity Monitor \ Memory usage) normal, but whenever WebStorm starts to reindex, it will all but crash my MacBook.

Please help!! I love this editor, but the weight it puts on my machine is really overwhelming to my workflow sometimes.

Matthew J Longinow, is it a 2022.1 build already, right?
If you believe that RAM usage is abnormal, I would suggest collecting a log files pack (Help > Collect Logs) and submitting a support request or YouTrack bug report, that will allow to check the situation in detail. 

I think I won the first place in IDE memory eating competition :)

Xepozz, no you didnt, hold my beer haha

Oh no, I've had 8.8 just yesterday but you beat me :C

Ddruganov, Hey dude, keep up!

Xepozz wtf haha this is insane, im not even gonna try to beat that lol

Xepozz ha dude just when I thought I lost this battle comes the ultimate RAM-eater