Occasionally I’ll find my computer slowing down dramatically only to realize a VS Code MCP server is using enough RAM to put me 50GB deep into Swap usage.
The thing is VS Code isn’t even my main IDE, I just use it to browse projects and as a text editor. I don’t need or want it to run an MCP server and I don’t know why it’s doing it.
I’m limited in my ability to provide more details, because I just killed the process last time, to move on with work, and didn’t take notes on what it was exactly. I’ll do that next time.
Has anybody else experienced something like this? It’s a very hard problem to search for - everybody wants to run MCP servers, not stop them.
I can’t currently use VS Code with extensions to check, but you should be able to uninstall or disable Copilot and MCP. When I search for MCP in the settings, I see several settings, some of which can restrict MCP use/start.
Alternatively, maybe you want to try a VSCode fork, like Codium (dunno if they only drop telemetry or some of the Copilot stuff as well now), or an alternative similar IDE, like Geany.
I guess I’ll take another look in there. The instructions for turning off Copilot on stack overflow keep needing updates, so I wonder if I’ll even find the same settings you’d looked it.
I’m in a game of cat and mouse with Microsoft, but - like I said below - I don’t want to switch to a fork at work.
Or if you want a fast editor built in rust there’s zed: https://zed.dev/
I’m using Helix at home, but I need to be able to collaborate with people with different priorities at work without starting with “it’s similar to Vim, but it’s built in Rust.” It’s important to me to be able to recommend extensions and everything.
uuh, I see Zed’s been available for Windows for a month now. That has always been a blocker for me. I’ll definitely try it out.
