PhpStorm 2026.1 freezing constantly – IDE becomes unusable
Hi,
I’m currently using PhpStorm 2026.1, and the IDE keeps freezing constantly. Every few minutes, it completely locks up for several seconds, sometimes longer, making it almost impossible to work properly.
This is becoming extremely frustrating — it breaks focus, interrupts workflow, and overall makes the IDE feel unusable.
I’m not doing anything particularly heavy: standard Symfony/PHP project, Docker environment, nothing out of the ordinary. Yet the freezes keep happening repeatedly throughout the day.
Has anyone else experienced this with version 2026.1?
Is this a known issue, or is there something I can tweak to improve stability?
Any help or feedback would be really appreciated, because in its current state, it’s seriously impacting productivity.
Thanks.
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I have the same constant freezing since 2026.1. I work on a very powerfull Macbook Pro M4 with 48G of RAM, and also have a Desktop Intel I9 with 64GB RAM - on both it crashes constantly and it has become very frequent recently. It is not a performance problem. It is a newly introduced bug because a couple of months ago it didn't happen and I have not installed new plugins.
Definitely not (just) a WSL issue - as I personally use Linux as OS for PhpStorm… Though I do of course run Docker through CLI - so may that be connected to ijent subsystem too? Anyways, I still think it's some generic approach problem that happened between the versions (and I have a feeling there were some changes around async works). Meaning I would strongly recommend focusing on what actually changed around async/EDT/threadpools/ijent subystem threadpools between the versions rather than trying to replicate an exact scenario.
I do not use or have WSL installed on my system as far as I know and I don't use Docker at all. So I doubt it could be related.
I was really hoping that 2026.1.2 would fix this but I guess not. I've had 3 crashes since this morning. *sigh*
I’m still stuck on PhpStorm 2025.2.6 because every newer version released so far has been slow and keeps crashing/freezing.
My setup is: Ubuntu on WSL on Windows 11, zsh + oh-my-zsh, and Docker Desktop.
The first problematic release for me was 2025.3, released around December 2025, and now we’re in May 2026 with 2026.1.1, but the IDE is still unusable in my environment.
I upgraded to 2026.1.1 today and it's crashed roughly every hour since then. Is there a fix or workaround yet? It's very difficult to get any work done when I'm constantly killing the process and restarting.
Gareth
I am still getting crashes on 2026.1.2 preview unfortunately.
I have taken the habit of frequently restarting PhpStorm to work around the issue. Every time I'm about to write a larger segment of code that requires my full focus, I'll restart it.
This is incredibly annoying but it helps a little bit.
I have been running PhpStorm 2026.2 EAP since the beginning of the week and so far I have not encountered any crashes.
Could this be fixed for good? Let's hope so! I'll come back and post if I ever get another crash.
Unfortunately I had my first crash today under 2026.2 EAP today.
Same as usual…
Have you guys tried the power safe mode? (just as a test)
In my case stan caused some problems since it tried to scan my project constantly. power safe mode kinda solved it BUT its more like deactivating some actual functions and not that what you might want since it takes way longer to get storm checking your code.
how ever, to work it may is a temp fix. this may helps for other problems as well. currently im facing the right click loading error in project tree, because of a wsl project. thats also very annying.
Exactly the same issues, both with 2026.1 and 2026.1.1. Disabling all plugins does not resolve the issue. Assigned 8G of memory, no difference. It freezes just about every few minutes, sometimes repeating multiple times in a row.
Very frustrating, the IDE is simply unusable.
I use PHPStorm on ArchLinux. Since version 2026.1 (2026.1, 2026.1.1, 2026.1.2), it has started freezing frequently. I’ve been experiencing frequent instances where I have to wait over ten seconds when trying to type in the Terminal or when right-clicking on a file or directory in the Project pane. Also, while this may not be directly related, the IDE has become very slow to launch. I tried to pinpoint the cause, but I simply cannot accept spending time debugging a product for which I’m paying a subscription. I don’t experience these issues when opening the same project in VSCode, but I don’t want to waste the subscription I’ve already paid for. Ultimately, I decided to downgrade to 2025.3.5 and continue working. This issue does not occur in version 2025.3.5. The startup time is also within an acceptable range. This is a paid product, not open source. I have no reason to help with debugging, and of course, I don’t have the time for it. Please provide a product that is worth the money I’m paying!
I had only one hang over last few days with PhpStorm 2026.1.2 and it recovered pretty quickly so so far didn't really have to revert to 2025.
I upgraded to 2026.1.2 last week and I'm still seeing the exact same freezes as before. In some cases, CPU usage goes to 900% and it never recovers, I need to kill phpStorm with the command line or ActivityMonitor (MacOS). Thread dumps are pretty much the same as previous version.