Pycharm display a modal "Scanning Installed Packages" for minutes, blocking any UI interaction
(this is not the “struck scanning installed packages” bug as the scanning do finish, except being looooong)
Here is the modal popup that display after each project opening for minutes:
There is no possibility to cancel the scanning because any UI interaction is blocked.
This was not the case before the 2025.2 update and the terrible move to the UI as a “classic” plugin.
PyCharm 2025.2.3 (Community Edition)
Build #PC-252.26830.99, built on October 2, 2025
Source revision: 1ca1b7cb209ae
Runtime version: 21.0.8+9-b1038.72 amd64 (JCEF 122.1.9)
VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o.
Toolkit: sun.awt.X11.XToolkit
Linux 6.8.0-83-generic
Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS; glibc: 2.39
GC: G1 Young Generation, G1 Concurrent GC, G1 Old Generation
Memory: 4096M
Cores: 8
Non-Bundled Plugins:
com.github.catppuccin.jetbrains (3.5.2)
com.intellij.classic.ui (252.23892.201)
intellij.git.commit.modal (252.23892.364)
net.seesharpsoft.intellij.plugins.csv (4.1.0)
mobi.hsz.idea.gitignore (4.5.6)
Current Desktop: KDE
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I coulnd't replicate it from my side on the Community Edition, it run as a background task - does disabling the custom theme/plugins help here?
Nonetheles, as additional details are required here, please create a new usability problem on YouTrack and provide the steps to replicate it
I Miguel,
This popup is displayed when the processing of the packages (like the conda packages, etc) takes a little bit too long (~2s from my experience). So this is not displayed for the majority of the python projects I guess but I use large projects with many heavy dependencies like tensorflow, pytorch and the data learning stack and it adds up very quickly.
The design mistake is to have this popup MODAL, which basically freezes the UI for minutes in my case and prevent access to the cancel button, AND do not offer any setting to stop this systematic and wasteful scan.
This is related to the way the poopup is implemented as the behavior is the same with or without theme or the classic UI plugin.
Pycharm implementation of its cache management is just broken, release after release, without anybody caring, just look at the number of tickets dying in silence since many years.
Systematically scanning conda, pip or whatever packages or environment each time the project is open without a criterion on its freshness is just beyond stupid.
Apparently there is not way to put any “AI” stuff in there, so no time to lose and I will spare my own time of creating a Youtrack ticket that nobody will ever care to look at, like my other ones.
Pycharm is dying under its irrelevance, neovim and its plugins are the future.
I created the mentioned usability problem on YouTrack with the described steps - https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-85033/The-modal-pop-up-for-Scanning-packages-has-no-option-to-cancel-so-UI-actions-are-blocked
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Christophe Avare we appreciate your feedback, and this looks like a serious bug so I already went ahead and created the report, but unfortunately, I still couldn't replicate it from my side. Could you please attach a simplified version of the project that allows us to replicate this issue? It would be extremely helpful. You can upload at https://uploads.jetbrains.com/ and share the uploadID
Thank you
I checked with our developers and it appears that this has been fixed on the 2025.3 version, which is expected be officially released at the end of November.
As of now you may download the EAP version from the Toolbox App or here - https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/nextversion/
Yeah, I’ve experienced something similar after the 2025.2 update. The scanning process takes forever, especially right after project load. What helped a bit was disabling unnecessary plugins, invalidating caches, and restarting PyCharm. Hopefully JetBrains addresses this lag in the next update — it’s definitely not ideal when every project takes minutes just to finish background scanning.