Modal dialog blocks all projects
Answered
When opening any modal dialog in a PyCharm instance it blocks all other instances as well.
It becomes a problem when working in multiple projects at the same time or even when to copy settings from one window to another.
I believe this is a very old problem. I've checked the posts and people have complained about this for 'years', and it hasn't been fixed. In 2008 it 'wasn't in the plans'.
Is there a solution for this?
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Hi Michel! Unfortunately this problem is not yet fixed. Please vote for https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-35480
I used to be a long Visual Studio .NET user and then I moved to PyCharm - I found this issue to be very limiting. Please can something be done?
Hi Saurabh Dasgupta1, Thanks for raising this, and sorry it has been a long-running annoyance.
This is a known limitation rather than a quick bug. Each IDE instance runs as a single process, so any modal dialog (Settings, Run/Debug configurations, a VCS diff, a progress window) blocks every project window in that instance. A proper fix needs deep architectural changes, which is why it has stayed open so long. It is tracked here, the same issue the older link in this thread now points to: IJPL-43713
It is still open but heavily voted, so watching it is the best way to hear about any progress.
One concrete improvement is on the way: in 2026.2 the Settings dialog becomes non-modal by default, so you can keep working in the editor while it is open (IJPL-715). That covers the Settings dialog specifically, not yet every dialog.
For now, the workaround is to run each project in its own IDE instance, which is a separate process, rather than as extra windows of the same instance. Separate instances have separate dialogs, so one will not freeze the others.
How voting and watching work: https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/articles/207241135