If you have ever opened GitKraken Desktop and wondered why it suddenly feels like it is wading through mud, you are not alone. This is especially painful when opening large repositories, loading pull requests, or resolving merge conflicts. In my case, GitKraken Desktop was not the problem at all. The real issue turned out to be my antivirus.
This post walks through what the slowdown looked like, why it happened, and the simple fix that brought GitKraken Desktop back to full speed.
The Symptoms
The issues showed up in a few very specific places:
- GitKraken Desktop took an unusually long time to boot, especially when opening multiple repos
- Pull requests took forever to load or refresh
- Merge conflict resolution was extremely slow, even for changes that were not that large
- The UI felt blocked during operations that are normally instant
At first glance, this looked like a performance issue inside GitKraken Desktop itself. Git operations like diffs, merges, and history traversal are usually fast, even on large repos. Something clearly was not adding up.
Why Git Workflows Are Sensitive to File Scanning
Under the hood, Git does a lot of file system work. When you open a repository, Git needs to:
- Read metadata from the
.gitdirectory - Walk the working tree to understand file state
- Generate diffs for pull requests and conflict resolution
Tools like GitKraken Desktop make this visible and approachable, but they still rely on the same Git mechanics. If something intercepts or slows down file reads, Git performance tanks.
That something, in my case, was the antivirus.
The Root Cause: MemoryBytes Antivirus Scanning Repositories
After some digging, I noticed that when I disabled MemoryBytes antivirus everything ran fine. Restart the virus scanner and everything slowed again. Every file read triggered a scan. That meant:
- Opening a repo caused thousands of small file scans
- Viewing a pull request triggered repeated scans while generating diffs
- Saving merge conflict resolutions caused rescans of entire directories
From GitKraken Desktop’s perspective, it was just waiting on the file system. From the antivirus perspective, it was doing its job. The combination was brutal.
The Fix: Add Git Repositories to the Exclusion List
The solution was straightforward.
I added my local Git repository folders to the MemoryBytes exclusion list. This tells the antivirus not to scan those directories in real time.
Once the exclusions were in place:
- GitKraken Desktop booted almost instantly again
- Pull requests loaded at normal speed
- Merge conflicts were smooth and responsive
- The UI no longer felt blocked during Git operations
Nothing else changed. Same repositories. Same GitKraken Desktop version. Just no more unnecessary scanning.
Why This Is Safe and Common Practice
Excluding Git repositories from real time antivirus scanning is a common recommendation for developers, just not something that had been implemented on my work laptop.
You still keep full system protection, while avoiding performance penalties in your development workflow.
If you are working on trusted codebases and using reputable tooling, this tradeoff is usually well worth it.
Takeaway
If GitKraken Desktop feels slow during startup, pull requests, or merge conflicts, do not assume the tool is at fault.
Check your antivirus.
If it is scanning your repositories in real time, adding those folders to the exclusion list can immediately restore the fast, fluid Git experience GitKraken Desktop is designed to provide.
Sometimes the fix is not a new setting in your Git client, but removing friction from everything around it.