garbage-day.nvim
February 25, 2026 ยท View on GitHub
Garbage collector that stops inactive LSP clients to free RAM
Why
In many scenarios, unmanaged LSP clients running on background can take several Gb of RAM. So I wrote this LSP garbage collector for NormalNvim to auto free it. But you can use it on any distro.
How to setup
Add this to lazy
{
"zeioth/garbage-day.nvim",
event = "VeryLazy",
opts = {
-- your options here
}
},
We also support changing opts on execution time like :let g:garbage_day_config['option']='value'
Available options
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
aggressive_mode | false | Set it to true to stop all lsp clients except the current buffer, every time you enter a buffer. aggressive_mode ignores grace_period, and it only triggers when entering a buffer with a different filetype than the current buffer. Ensures the maximum RAM save. |
excluded_lsp_clients | here | Table of LSP clients that should never be stopped. Useful for LSP clients that miss behave. |
grace_period | 60*15 | Seconds to wait before stopping all LSP clients after neovim loses focus. |
wakeup_delay | 0 | Milliseconds to wait before restoring LSP after the mouse re-enters nvim. Useful to avoid waking up the LSP clients by accident when passing the mouse over it. |
Debug options
You can tweak them in case some particular LSP client don't start/stop correctly on your machine.
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
aggressive_mode_ignore | here | Buffers to ignore on aggressive_mode. |
notifications | false | Set it to true to get a notification every time LSP garbage collection triggers. |
retries | 3 | Times to try to start a LSP client before giving up. |
timeout | 1000 | Milliseconds that will take for retries to complete. Example: by default we try 3 retries for 1000ms. |
IMPORTANT: If you change the default values, make sure the value of grace_period is always bigger than timeout/1000. This ensures you are leaving enough time between stop_lsp()/start_lsp(), so they don't overlap.
FAQ
If it doesn't workThis plugin has been tested with neovim 0.10 and 0.11. If you are in a neovim version superior to nvim 0.11, and it doesn't work, please open a issue tagging me and I will fix it.Can I manually trigger garbage collection?Yes, you can do it like
require("garbage-day.utils").stop_lsp() -- stop all lsp clients.
require("garbage-day.utils").start_lsp() -- start lsp clients for the current buffer.
๐ Support the project
If you want to help me, please star this repository to increase the visibility of the project.
Where do that cheesy name come from?
Other alternatives
- lsp-timeout: Recommended for nvim versions
<=0.8