I've been noticing that running any command or making database requests on my localhost has become really slow, and I can't seem to find the answers anywhere. A few years back when I worked on a React and MongoDB project, everything was snappy. Now, I'm using Laravel with Livewire, and whenever I run a php artisan command or an npm command, it takes way longer than it should—just like in both PHPStorm and VSCode. I've watched tutorials where the commands finish instantly, so I'm worried there might be something behind the scenes slowing things down. I even suspect that maybe Windows Defender is causing delays while validating these commands. Additionally, my database calls also feel sluggish; a simple post request now takes one to two seconds to complete, while it used to be nearly instant. I have modern hardware that's designed for heavy workloads, so I doubt it's a hardware issue.
4 Answers
It’s tough to diagnose without seeing your setup, but if you suspect Windows Defender is the culprit, you could try temporarily disabling it to see if performance improves. It might help clarify if it's the cause.
I would recommend setting up another similar project just to see if the problem is isolated to your current Laravel app. It would help us diagnose further since I’ve been running Laravel apps on Windows without any issues.
While this might sound old-fashioned, have you thought about adding some print statements to your code to see where the delays are happening? Unless your database is seriously huge or your hardware is outdated, there shouldn’t be such a significant slowdown.
My database is almost empty on localhost, and the project is pretty small, so I’m not sure what’s going wrong.
Just a thought, but if you're running your Laravel site on a Linux VM while doing your coding on a Windows host (like with Sail through Docker), that might be slowing things down. Consider moving your site files directly to the Linux VM and running your commands from there. Accessing the Windows filesystem from Linux can seriously drag performance.
Old school, huh? I slap those print statements everywhere, too! Guess we both share that wisdom.