IntelliJ is CONSTANTLY freezing on me - desktop or laptop ... doesn't matter
I've been using JetBrains products for over a decade. I've thoroughly familiarized myself with a variety of them, including PyCharm, PhpStorm, WebStorm, Android Studio, DataSpell & DataGrip, RubyMine, and CLion.
This year, I made the ridiculous decision to go back to school in pursuit of a doctorate in mathematics. Then I made the ever more ridiculous decision to take an advanced algorithm & analysis course - *thinking* it would be an easy few credits.
The class requires that everything is built in Java (one of those hardcore, "strongly typed, OOP languages are the best - end of story! Period! Exclamation mark! EOF!" sorts of atmospheres).
Ok - fine - whatever.
I took a few Java courses back when I was a kid in college, this should be no problem.
They also just happen to really push the use of Eclipse, an IDE I've never really gotten along with. So I thought to myself, “I'll use IntelliJ instead, being that it's a superior JB product, a company that has won my trust countless times over the past 15-some-odd years. Plus, I'll go be a JB missionary and convert everybody taking the course to IntelliJ!”
Whoops!
This frickin' IDE … *sigh*/*rubs temples* FREEZES … ALL … THE … TIME!
Doesn't matter if I'm running it on my laptop, on my desktop, on a lab computer … it just doesn't matter! I couldn't build a program specifically to freeze as much as this does (… ok, that's not true, I totally could - but you get my point).
It's the worst when I just go to close a project. IntelliJ just drops straight into an infinite “saving project” progress bar. I always end up having to kill -9 it's hung self.
I have never had issues like this with any other JB product. Never ever. Not ever. Not never neither!
I vouched for it so hard. I freakin' love JB. I adore them. But IntelliJ … man. It's like it's the problem child of the whole grip of JB products.
What I'm wondering here is, is it down for everyone or just me?
I'm not looking for any actual fixes at this point (though, that'd be nice). I'm just trying to get a feel for how prevalent an issue freezing is for IntelliJ. I may even have to just drop to the low, low level of using Eclipse.
But wow. I was selling it to my much younger classmates; telling everybody how much better JB products are and that IntelliJ is far superior to Eclipse.
Now? Now I can't seem to pry my feet from my mouth after they've both been securely force-wedged into the tight grip of my now dislocated jaw.
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Hi, just adding in to say that IntelliJ is freezing very regularly for up to a minute in the middle of doing nothing special (typing Java code or just scrolling through the code).
Obviously this is very annoying, makes me lose focus and kind of breaks the single core reason of existing of this tool: to let me read and edit code.
Please report issues at https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/newIssue?project=IJPL with the logs/thread dumps attached via Help | Collect Logs and Diagnostic Data. If the IDE is freezing, refer to https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/articles/206544899.
Please note that the IDE (Intellj Ultimate) more recent versions keep getting stuck (Rainbow of Death) on more recent version of MacOS.
So it is fair say, the more recent version of the IDE and MacOS somehow are not compatible.
There's no need for bothering users with thread dumps and stuff. You need good tests.
- Across multiple upgrades of users with various settings already set (not a fresh IDE).
- Plug and Unplug various monitors; check if the IDE freezes.
- Let the laptop sleep and wake up with an external monitor plugged in; check if the IDE freezes.
If these two alone don't produce a freeze, then you can ask users for debug info.
You'll have to trust some of my suggestions because I've been an intelllj Ultimate users for more than a decade (and also community edition). I use them both in home and work environments (different versions of IDE, MacOS and Device Management).
Ravindranath Akila Gunaratne
Freezes and other performance-related issues can be caused by a great variety of things and combinations of things. Our tests cover some of the most common scenarios, but there will always be corner cases with a sequence of events that could not have been predicted. That's why analyzing user cases one by one, we can get more context on how and why the problem happened, and improve the tests accordingly.
Checking the logs allows us to identify the issue as already existing / dealt with (= has a workaround / solution that can be communicated to users), or a new one requiring our attention and extensive investigation. Sometimes freezes are caused by new versions of third-party plugins (for which we have only basic tests at this time), or new OpenJDK bugs, for instance, on which our runtime is based.
If you report a freeze without providing logs and dumps to back it up, we won't be able to suggest a solution so that you can keep working in the latest version. Nor will we be able to catch a problem if it's something new and deal with it quickly. In some cases, a rollback to the previous version or re-installing from scratch helps, but when it doesn't, analyzing application activity, Java crash dumps, system logs and user environment settings becomes essential to restoring the IDE to a working order.
In other words, if you still have this problem in the latest version 2024.3.2.2, please provide IDE logs for analysis (entire archive): Help | Collect Logs and Diagnostic Data. It can be uploaded privately to our server (make sure to share the id of the upload here so that I can find it).
You can also check the following troubleshooting guides for common solutions to the problem:
Will try
Upload id: 2025_02_02_6aRoDiA8PGcaBRrpkhHbKj (file: freeze.zip)
I'm on 24.1.3 at home workstation. Let me know if you actually fixed the bug before i need to upgrade.
Please see https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-5497/Freeze-in-metal-MTLRenderQueue.flushNow for the workaround.
The fix is not released yet, you need to run the IDE under the new custom JetBrains Runtime as described in the linked issue.
Same Problem on 2024.3.4.1. My solution was disabeling Typescript Language Service / Show project errors. Perhaps its a network Problem in the company, where some (a lot) of IPs will be blocked.
ps: show suggestions works fine
This problem has returned in WebStorm 2024.3.5 (Build #WS-243.26053.12, built on March 12, 2025). I'm on macOS 15.3.2. Very annoying, and a huge loss of productivity. I guess I'll investigate downgrading to 2024.3.4, where the problem seemed resolved.
This happens to me on windows now every five minutes. IDEA has become totally unworkable.
It fully freezes on ‘saving settings’. This happens on a fresh project. I removed .idea-folder, invalidated caches and try to let IJ forget everything it knows and it keeps happening. None of the mentioned workaround help in any way shape or form. Please advice.
Do I have to go back to an old version? This has taken me OVER AN HOUR just this morning in COMPLETE frustration…
Previous versions can be installed via https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/other.html or https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox-app/ .
If the IDE is freezing, please contact support at https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/requests/new with the logs/thread dumps using Help | Collect Logs and Diagnostic Data and also provide manual thread dumps using jstack per https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/articles/206544899 .