The Android Studio is slowed down by the real-time scan, must re-add the ability to exclude folders

[ihappyago]

I've noticed that Mcafee has not continued to support excluding folders from real-time scanning for years, which has slowed down software like Android Studio considerably. Excluding the main AS program files from the scan has no effect.

This is extremely disruptive to daily use, and any functionality of Android Studio is extremely limited and slowed down by at least 20 times.

If you refuse to add the ability to exclude folders to your security center, I will have to stop using Mcafee and stop renewing my subscription next cycle  : )

Android Studio version: 2021.2.1 Patch 2

Macfee AntiVirus version: 16.0

Security Center: 19.18

VirusScan: 26.3

Run on Windows 11 Home, 9750H

[Venkat_YM]

Hi @ihappyago 

Greetings from McAfee.

We are sorry for the inconvenience caused. I have sent a private message to you, kindly check the private message for further details.

Regards,
Venkat

[marcosrocha]

I kindly ask you to help me with this either. I'm having that problem since ever and I never be able to fix.

C:\Users\currentUser\androidProjects\my-android-project
C:\Users\currentUser\.gradle
C:\Users\currentUser\Android\Sdk
C:\Users\currentUser\AppData\Local\Google\AndroidStudio2022.2

[ihappyago]

Six months have passed since this post was published, but the problem remains unresolved. As a paid software, this is very disappointing. I will start by posting here the timeline of my communication with the administrator:

September 11, 2022 - This post was published and the admin contacted me to ask if I had excluded the exe file from the live scan. I replied that I had excluded it, but there would still be issues and the admin said he would be checking on this.
September 21, 2022 - The admin indicated to me that he had not gotten a response yet.
September 24, 2022 - Admin states that McAfee will release R49 in a week, he prompts me to check for updates and informs him of progress.
October 2022 - After waiting about ten days or so, the update was pushed out and I tested it briefly and the problem was not resolved. But I was very busy at this time, so I had to put it on hold at this point.
Late December 2022 - I finished this phase and contacted the admins to let them know that the issue had not been resolved. The admins replied with a letter along the lines of "Thank you for your feedback, we will feedback the issue to the team and get back to you via private message when there is progress" and then nothing more.

Now that April is coming to an end, it is very easy to reproduce this problem, which only shows that the McAfee team is not concerned about this, very perfunctory. Excluding folders is an industry solution for security software and McAfee has not added it since it was removed years ago; not to mention that it is a paid software. I personally am very disappointed that there is a lot of security software out there and McAfee, in addition to this issue, is often a hog on system resources and even though I have turned off features such as real-time scanning, I can often see it flashing through the task manager to the extent of 10-20% usage occasionally. As a paying user, I can only stop the subscription to show my attitude. That's about it.

[MaxiJonson]

Hi,

TL;DR; Real-Time Scanning is the obvious and undeniable culprit in slowing down most of my apps across my computer (not just Android Studio as the post suggests).

I'm a developer as well, however, I mainly use VS Code and other tools such as Git Bash.

A month ago, I noticed that opening VS Code took so long it asked me if I wanted to "stop waiting for previous editors to load", which I thought might be due to the various extensions I have on it that would slow it down. Then I noticed opening Git Bash was also pretty slow and even "cd" and "ls" commands would take about 3 seconds, which is A LOT for commands that are usually instant.

After ruling out hardware issues through testing and troubleshooting, I thought my Windows installation was getting pretty old, so I wiped my PC entirely. This made my programs run fast again... until I reinstalled McAfee, which prompted me to investigate. It wasn't long before I figured out that simply turning off Real-Time Scanning would instantly boost my PC's performance BY MILES. 

Here's a simple test I ran sequentially (i.e. not doing anything in between)
Real-Time Scanning ON: Git Bash takes 22 seconds to open, and 3 seconds to write the initial prompt.
Real-Time Scanning OFF: Git Bash takes 2 seconds to open and show an initial prompt.
Real-Time Scanning ON (just to make sure it wasn't a fluke caused by re-opening a closed app): Git Bash takes 23 seconds to open, and 3 seconds to write the initial prompt.

It's undeniable to me, Real Time Scanning is the culprit. Hopefully this gets fixed (again). I've been scrolling through posts as old as 2010 on here blaming Real-Time Scanning for performance issues. I never had them up until a month ago, so whatever they changed since should be reverted and reworked...

Git Bash was used here as an example, but similar results can be encountered with VS Code, Postman, Spark Mail, ... it seems any program from the Internet is affected (so almost every one of them)