PhpStorm Booster

May 22, 2026 · View on GitHub

A PhpStorm/IntelliJ plugin with tools for better local development practices — focused on taming indexing and cache bloat on large PHP/Magento projects.

Status: 0.1.0 — concept release. Built to validate the idea on real projects. Expect rough edges; see Caveats.

Compatible with PhpStorm 2025.3 (build 253.*).

Why

On large Magento/PHP codebases, PhpStorm's indexing causes two recurring pains:

  1. Huge generated/vendor folders (var, generated, pub/static, node_modules, …) get indexed on every project, slowing everything down.
  2. Index caches grow without bound — repeatedly removing and re-adding vendor/ (e.g. composer install) leaves dead index records behind. The global cache (~/.cache/JetBrains/PhpStorm…/index) can balloon to many GB and eventually destabilize the IDE.

PhpStorm Booster bundles two feature areas to address these.

Features

1. Index Blocker

Globally exclude folders from indexing across all projects — configure once, applies everywhere.

  • Settings → Tools → Index Blocker
  • Three match forms per entry:
    • Exact name — var matches any folder named var at any depth
    • Prefix wildcard — Test* matches Test, Tests, TestUtils, …
    • Relative path — pub/static matches that path under a content root
  • Default block list: node_modules, var, generated, dev, pub/static, Test*
  • Matched folders show the standard "excluded" mark and are skipped from indexing/search.
  • Live refresh when settings change or matching folders appear.

2. Cache Health

Visibility into and control over PhpStorm's cache/index storage.

  • Main-toolbar widget showing the live index cache size; click for actions.
  • Quick Trim — clears safe-to-reclaim caches (logs immediately; embedded-browser/AI caches scheduled for next restart, since the running IDE locks them).
  • Invalidate Caches & Restart — one click, delegates to the native PhpStorm action.
  • Size monitor — warns when the index cache exceeds a threshold (default 8 GB), once per session.
  • Enforce disabling of downloadable Shared Indexes on every startup (default on).
  • Settings → Tools → Cache Health.

Install

From a release zip

  1. Download phpstorm-booster-<version>.zip (from a CI build artifact or a release).
  2. PhpStorm → Settings → Plugins → ⚙ → Install Plugin from Disk… → pick the zip.
  3. Restart if prompted.

Build from source

Requires a JDK/JBR 21.

./gradlew buildPlugin
# → build/distributions/phpstorm-booster-<version>.zip

Other useful tasks:

./gradlew test          # unit + light integration tests
./gradlew verifyPlugin   # JetBrains plugin compatibility check
./gradlew runIde         # launch a sandbox PhpStorm with the plugin

CI

Every push and pull request builds the plugin and uploads the zip as a workflow artifact — see .github/workflows/build.yml. Download the artifact from the Actions tab of a completed run.

Caveats

This is a 0.1.0 concept; known limitations:

  • Disabling downloadable Shared Indexes may not shrink the cache and can make local indexing do more work. It's included because it's a deliberate user preference, not because it reduces index/ size. You can turn it off in Cache Health settings.
  • Cache Health Quick Trim clears logs/JCEF/AI caches, not the main index/ storage. To reclaim index/ itself, use Invalidate Caches & Restart (rebuilds a compacted index for active projects only).
  • Built against the PhpStorm 2023.3 SDK originally, retargeted to 2025.3. Two internal-API usages (AppLifecycleListener.appStarted, delegating to the native invalidate action) produce verifier warnings — non-fatal, slated for cleanup.
  • The plugin uses only platform APIs; the code works in any IntelliJ-based IDE, though it's published for PhpStorm.

License

Copyright © Qoliber. All rights reserved (license TBD).