PhpStorm Light — experimental lightweight build — phpstorm.dev

Install with the Toolbox App

Recommended

Build 262.9421 · 2026-07-21

• Settings sync now uses its own stream, so Light no longer overwrites your regular PhpStorm settings
• Fixed settings import not completing on first start
• Composer now runs in a reworked terminal tab
• Fixed a freeze when writing screenshots
• JSON schema updates are no longer missed when many files change at once

Faster startup

• Instant window on launch — the editor appears immediately with a placeholder preview instead of an empty frame with spinners; the real editor takes over once it's ready.
• Smarter indexing order — your PHP source files are indexed first and vendor/ last, so code intelligence in your own code lights up sooner.
• Less startup busywork — watching of vendor/, Composer update checks, and plugin-update checks are deferred; the "updates available" check now runs when you open composer.json, not at startup.
• No startup plugin nags — the IDE no longer scans your project on launch to advertise plugins; suggestions appear only when you open a matching file (e.g. opening vite.config.* suggests the Vite plugin).
• Clearer indexing progress — indexing now shows how many files are left.

Smoother editing, fewer freezes

• No more commit-dialog hang — "Analyze code" and "Check TODO" before commit are off by default, so committing large changesets no longer freezes the dialog (re-enable them in the commit dialog).
• Lighter highlighting profile — a dedicated "PhpStorm Light" inspection profile runs fewer inspections as you type.
• No per-file gutter scanning — the PHP "extends / implements / overrides" gutter icons are off, skipping a class-hierarchy search on every file you open.
• Code Vision off — the usages / inheritors / code-author inlays above declarations are disabled.
• Generated files skipped — single-file artifacts like *.phar.php (e.g. installers) are excluded from indexing.
• Smart Mode toggle — replaces "Power Save Mode" with a Light-Mode-aware switch that controls how much background analysis runs.

Cleaner, more focused UI

• Compact UI density and breadcrumbs off by default.
• The top-right inspection widget is hidden; the status bar is trimmed to the essentials (PHP language level + Smart Mode).
• Rendered-documentation view and its gutter icon are off; "Open in Browser" editor icons are hidden on PHP and HTML/template files.
• Decluttered Project tree — expand/collapse chevrons, Scratches and Consoles are hidden, and External Libraries moves to the view selector.
• Simplified right-click menus in the Project and Commit/Changes views — a short, curated set of actions plus an "Open In" submenu, with the full menu still under "More…".

Lighter footprint

• Database tools load on demand — instead of starting up with the IDE, they activate the first time you use a database feature.
• Composer in a terminal tab — Composer commands run in a terminal tab so you can see and reuse the output.
• Rarely-used plugins off or removed — CMS integrations (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal), some front-end frameworks (Angular, Vue, React, Vite, Webpack), BDD/test frameworks (Behat, Codeception, PHPSpec), Smarty, UML diagrams, Vagrant, Perforce, grammar checking, time tracking, and several others. Core PHP, Blade, Twig, and the common Laravel/Symfony workflows stay intact.