Sentinely
When VS Code or Cursor slows your Mac
Code intelligence grows over long sessions, and every open project keeps its own helpers. Sentinely restarts language servers, adds watcher excludes, or reopens the editor.
VS Code and editors built on it, such as Cursor and Windsurf, run a language server for code intelligence and an extension host for each open project window. Over a long session, language servers such as TypeScript's tsserver can grow large. Watching node_modules, build, and cache folders adds background work too.
Sentinely offers three fixes, from least to most disruptive: restart an oversized language server (the editor starts a fresh one), add watcher and search excludes for dependency folders to your editor settings, or quit and reopen the editor so every project gets fresh helpers.
Steps
Restart code intelligence
If a language server is holding a lot of memory, Sentinely can stop it. The editor restarts it automatically. Autocomplete pauses for a few seconds. In VS Code you can do the same yourself with the command TypeScript: Restart TS Server.
Stop watching dependency folders
If your editor settings do not exclude node_modules, build, and cache folders from file watching, Sentinely can add files.watcherExclude entries to your settings.json. It saves a backup next to the file first.
Reopen the editor when many projects are open
Each project window keeps its own helpers. When the editor as a whole is holding a lot across several windows, quitting and reopening it restores your windows with fresh helpers. Sentinely asks you to confirm this one.
Read the receipt
Language servers restart by design, so Sentinely measures the whole editor, not just the stopped process. That way the receipt does not count memory the fresh server uses again as freed.
Before you start
- Save your work before you quit and reopen the editor. Terminals and tasks running inside it restart.
- Excluding a folder from watching means the editor will not notice changes inside it on its own. That is usually what you want for node_modules and build output, but check before you exclude your own source folders.
Questions
Which editors does this cover?
Visual Studio Code, VS Code Insiders, Cursor, and Windsurf.
Will it change my settings without asking?
No. Adding excludes is a fix you review and run. Sentinely saves a backup of settings.json next to the file before it writes.