Here is my recipe how to speed up your lovely WebStorm:

  • Go to Preferences and do next:
    1. Appearance & Behaviour > System Settings > Updates: disable auto update
    2. Appearance & Behaviour > System Settings > Usage Statistics: Uncheck Allow sending data usage statistics to JetBrains
    3. Editor > Live Templates: disable all, leave only what you are really use
    4. Editor > Emmet: disable all emmets
    5. Editor > Intentions: I leave only: CSS, Declaration, JavaScript and Language Injection
    6. Plugins: leave only next (* - can be also disabled in case you don't need them):
      • CoffeeScript *
      • CSS Suport
      • CVS Integration
      • Git Integration
      • HTML Tool
      • IntelliLang
      • JavaScript Debugger *
      • JavaScript Intention Power Pack
      • JavaScript Support
      • NodeJS *
      • Perforce Integration
      • SASS suport *
    7. Project > Directories: Exclude all what you don't use
    8. Languages & Frameworks > JavaScript > Libraries: leave only: HTML and HTML5 / EcmaScript 5
    9. Languages & Frameworks > Compass: disable it
    10. Tools > WebBrowsers: leave only Chrome
  • Help > Edit Custom VM Options: Edit and increase usage memory pwd:

    -Xms1024m
    -Xmx1536m
    -XX:MaxPermSize=1024m
    -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=512m
    -XX:+UseCompressedOops

So the main idea is next: disable all in Preferences what you really don't use and increase memory for IDE.


There is a "Power Save Mode" setting in the files menu. This will disable some syntax highlighting and stuff, but will improve the speed of any JetBrains IDE.


Also check out ScriptedAlchemy's jetbrains-ide-performance github repository - and be sure to check out the updated settings in the issues. Disabling unused global symbols (search for it in the settings, it's under inspections) also seems to help.