How to increase IDE memory limit in IntelliJ IDEA on Mac?

I'm using IDEA 12 Leda on Mountain Lion. I wanted to increase the maximum memory that IDE can use. I set the VMOptions in Info.plist file to be -Xmx2048m -ea -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -Xverify:none -Xbootclasspath/a:../lib/boot.jar

When I open up IDEA, I still see the maximum memory to be 711m.

jps -v shows my VMOptions has been loaded but it's replaced by the following options.

29388  **-Xmx2048m** -ea -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError -Xverify:none -Xbootclasspath/a:../lib/boot.jar -Xms128m **-Xmx800m** -XX:MaxPermSize=350m -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=64m -XX:+UseCodeCacheFlushing -XX:+UseCompressedOops -Didea.paths.selector=IdeaIC12 -Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true -Didea.max.intellisense.filesize=2500 -Didea.dynamic.classpath=false -Didea.jars.nocopy=false -Dsun.java2d.d3d=false -Dapple.awt.fullscreencapturealldisplays=false -Dapple.laf.useScreenMenuBar=true -Djava.endorsed.dirs= -Dswing.bufferPerWindow=false -Didea.fatal.error.notification=enabled -Didea.cycle.buffer.size=1024 -Didea.popup.weight=heavy -Didea.xdebug.key=-Xdebug -Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=true -Dsun.java2d.pmoffscreen=false -Didea.no.launcher=false -DCVS_PASSFILE=~/.cvspass -Didea.use.default.antialiasing.in.editor=false -Dcom.apple.mrj.application.live-resize=false -Didea.smooth.progress=false
29392 Jps -Dapplication.home=/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home -Xms8m

Where does -Xmx800 come from? I need to remove it.

Since IDEA 15.0.4 you can use Help | Edit Custom VM Options...:

This will automatically create a copy of the .vmoptions file in the config folder and open a dialog to edit it.

IntelliJ IDEA 12 is a signed application, therefore changing options in Info.plist is no longer recommended, as the signature will not match and you will get issues depending on your system security settings (app will either not run, or firewall will complain on every start, or the app will not be able to use the system keystore to save passwords).

As a result of addressing IDEA-94050 a new way to supply JVM options was introduced in IDEA 12:

Now it can take VM options from ~/Library/Preferences/<appFolder>/idea.vmoptions and system properties from ~/Library/Preferences/<appFolder>/idea.properties.

For example, to use -Xmx2048m option you should copy the original .vmoptions file from /Applications/IntelliJ IDEA.app/bin/idea.vmoptions to ~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdea12/idea.vmoptions, then modify the -Xmx setting.

The final file should look like:

-Xms128m
-Xmx2048m
-XX:MaxPermSize=350m
-XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=64m
-XX:+UseCodeCacheFlushing
-XX:+UseCompressedOops

Copying the original file is important, as options are not added, they are replaced.

This way your custom options will be preserved between updates and application files will remain unmodified making signature checker happy.

Community Edition: ~/Library/Preferences/IdeaIC12/idea.vmoptions file is used instead.

Helpful trick I thought I'd share on this old thread.

You can see how much memory is being used and adjust things accordingly using the Show memory indicator setting.

It shows up in the lower right of the window.

For IDEA 13 and OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the correct paths are:

Original: /Applications/IntelliJ IDEA 13.app/Contents/bin/idea.vmoptions

Copy to: ~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdea13/idea.vmoptions

Here is a link to the latest documentation as of today http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/webhelp/increasing-memory-heap.html

As for the intellij2018 version I am using the following configuration for better performance

-server
-Xms1024m
-Xmx4096m
-XX:MaxPermSize=1024m
-XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=512m
-XX:+UseCompressedOops
-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8
-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC
-XX:+AggressiveOpts
-XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled
-XX:+CMSIncrementalMode
-XX:+CMSIncrementalPacing
-XX:CMSIncrementalDutyCycleMin=0
-XX:-TraceClassUnloading
-XX:+TieredCompilation
-XX:SoftRefLRUPolicyMSPerMB=100
-ea
-Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false
-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true
-Djdk.http.auth.tunneling.disabledSchemes=""
-XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError
-XX:-OmitStackTraceInFastThrow
-Xverify:none

-XX:ErrorFile=$USER_HOME/java_error_in_idea_%p.log
-XX:HeapDumpPath=$USER_HOME/java_error_in_idea.hprof

go to that path "C:\Program Files (x86)\JetBrains\IntelliJ IDEA 12.1.4\bin\idea.exe.vmoptions" and change size to -Xmx512m

  -Xms128m
  -Xmx512m
  -XX:MaxPermSize=250m
  -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=64m
  -XX:+UseCodeCacheFlushing
  -ea
  -Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false
  -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true

hope its will work

OSX 10.9, if you dont bother about signed application you might just change

/Applications/IntelliJ\ IDEA\ 12\ CE.app/bin/idea.vmoptions

It looks like IDEA solves this for you (like everything else). When loading a large project and letting it thrash, it will open a dialog to up the memory settings. Entering 2048 for Xmx and clicking "Shutdown", then restarting IDEA makes IDEA start up with more memory. This seems to work well for Mac OS, though it never seems to persist for me on Windows (not sure about IDEA 12).

Zack

On my machine this only works in bin/idea.vmoptions, adding the setting in ~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdea12/idea.vmoptions causes the IDEA to hang during startup.

Some addition to the top answer here https://stackoverflow.com/posts/13581526/revisions