How to disable all third-party (downloaded) plugins in IntelliJ IDEs – Support | JetBrains

Background

There are two types of plugins in the JetBrains IDEs:

The ones that are bundled with the IDE installation. They are developed by JetBrains, pre-installed and enabled by default.
The ones that the users download and install themselves. These are called custom, downloaded, non-bundled or third-party plugins. Third-party plugins are developed and added to the JetBrains Marketplace by other vendors: individual developers or companies like Github or Google.

The code of bundled plugins is maintained by JetBrains: new plugin versions are released together with new IDE releases to ensure full compatibility.

Developers of custom plugins, however, need time to adjust the code of their plugins to each new version of an IDE to account for changes in the IDE core code (so that they don't break things). That is why sometimes outdated or buggy versions of third-party plugins can cause problems in the IDE: UI glitches, freezing, slowness, etc.

The first step to troubleshoot such problems is to temporarily disable ALL third-party plugins, restart the IDE and check if the issue is reproduced without them.

Question

How to quickly disable ALL downloaded plugins in IntelliJ IDEs?

Answer

Go to Settings | Plugins and click on the gear button, ⚙
Select the option to 'Disable All Downloaded Plugins'
Restart the IDE

Note: You can re-enable disabled plugins using the neighboring option, 'Enable All Downloaded Plugins'.

In cases when the IDE cannot be started or UI is hanging, there are two options:

Option 1

Run the IDE from the command line using the disableNonBundledPlugins option.

Example for Windows cmd:
```
idea64.exe "C:\MyProject" disableNonBundledPlugins
```
This option allows launching IntelliJ once without loading any of the manually installed plugins, making it easier to find and update (or uninstall) the offending plugin. On the next regular IDE launch, all of the plugins that were disabled using this method will be re-enabled.

Option 2

Remove all manually installed plugins manually using your OS file explorer:
1. Make sure the IDE is closed (or the corresponding process is killed if it's hanging, e.g. idea64.exe)
2. Navigate to the IDE configuration directory, look for the folder called plugins and remove it. This folder contains libraries of all custom plugins installed in the IDE.
Path to the plugins folder ultimately should look like this:
- Windows: %APPDATA%\JetBrains\<product><version>\plugins
- MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/JetBrains/<product><version>/plugins
- Linux: ~/.local/share/JetBrains/<product><version>
Example for Windows: C:\Users\Arina.Efremova\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\IntelliJIdea2025.2\plugins