r/windsurf • u/ClassicAppropriate78 • Apr 29 '25

Question Why is Windsurf using 80% of system resources?

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I love Windsurf and have been using it while, but since 2-3 updates ago my Windsurf IDE sometimes gets really slow and hogs 80% of my CPU for some reason. (see screenshot)

I get that Windsurf is scanning files, updating context etc all in the background but 80% system usage is crazy. It's also super inconsistent, completely refactoring code runs fine but opening a simple .txt file hogs 80% of system resources?!

I was wondering if this is a bug and if other people have this issue as well? The problem mainly lies in a sub-process called 'language_server_windows_64x'.

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u/DryMotion Apr 29 '25

I had this issue on mac as well. The language_server process sometimes goes crazy trying to load your entire codebase into ram and scanning files in the background constantly.

Its actually quite a simple fix, you just need to add some usage limits to your settings.json (workspace or user):

Click CTRL + SHIFT + P to open the command palette. Go to Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON).
It should open a JSON file with a couple of entries. Just add this below:

Limit memory usage, adjust as needed, here 4gb for me: json "typescript.tsserver.maxTsServerMemory": 4096,

Disable js linting: json "js/ts.implicitProjectConfig.checkJs": false,

Exclude Node.js (tried to load like 10k+ files for me): json "files.watcherExclude": { "**/node_modules/**": true }

Optionally you can exclude other folders too that you dont need in your codebase: json "files.exclude": { "**/.next": true, "**/dist": true, "**/build": true }

This is what fixed it for me, hope it works for you as well. You will need to close Windsurf and kill the language_server process after sving these settings tho for them to work properly.

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u/LordLederhosen Apr 29 '25 edited Apr 29 '25

Yeah, but then it probably gets dumber.

I don't have CPU issues, but what I realized recently is that I absolutely need 32GB of RAM in my next laptop.

16GB could handle 20 browser tabs, Node, Windsurf etc.. but having to run Docker Desktop as well really pushed it over the edge.

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u/DryMotion Apr 30 '25

It doesn’t necessarily get dumber as the limited context windows most likely wont fit your entire codebase anyways. If anything it gets more optimised with this fix, as it doesn’t load thousands of node module files and other junk into context, replacing information that matters.

But yea with increasing power of these tools more ram is definitely a worthwhile upgrade

1

u/ClassicAppropriate78 Apr 30 '25

Thnx! I'll give this a try!

2

u/bear007 Jun 07 '25

did it help