Indexing Delays, Syntax Highlighting Glitches, and Project-Wide Search Issues Affecting My Texas Roadhouse Menu Website Workspace

[joejain]

I’ve been experiencing a set of strange technical issues in Sublime Text that are starting to interfere with my workflow on a project I’m maintaining—a Texas Roadhouse menu website built with a mixture of HTML, JSON data files, JavaScript modules, and some templating. The first and most persistent problem is extremely slow indexing whenever I open the project. Sublime Text begins the indexing process and gets stuck at certain JSON files (specifically the large menu-data files). Sometimes it completes after several minutes, but other times the editor becomes sluggish until I manually restart it. I’ve tried excluding folders and tweaking indexing settings, but the inconsistency remains.

In addition to that, I’m seeing syntax highlighting break randomly in several file types. For example, some of my HTML files that contain embedded JS (used for menu item filters and pricing logic) display incorrect colors, especially around blocks. JSON highlighting also occasionally loses structure, turning everything into plain text after a few edits. This usually fixes itself after closing and reopening the file, but it slows down development and makes spotting errors harder while updating menu items and nutritional data.

Another issue I keep running into is unreliable project-wide search behavior. When I use “Find in Files” to search for a price value, ingredient term, or specific menu item name, Sublime Text sometimes fails to return results that I know exist in the project. Other times it returns outdated results, as if it’s not indexing the newest file contents. This has caused a few problems where I updated item names or pricing in multiple places but missed a stray reference because the search didn’t detect it. Clearing the index via the command palette helps occasionally, but the problem keeps returning.

I’ve also been struggling with auto-completion and snippets behaving inconsistently. For example, some of my HTML snippets for rendering menu cards or nutritional info blocks won’t trigger unless I type the trigger text extremely slowly or restart Sublime. Even simple JS completions like object keys for menu items sometimes don’t appear at all. I rely heavily on these to maintain consistent structure across the menu database and layout templates, so this has been slowing down development considerably.

Another odd issue occurs when working with multiple panes. When editing several menu-related files side-by-side (like JSON + HTML + JS), Sublime Text occasionally stops updating syntax colors or brace matching in one of the panes. It doesn’t crash, but it behaves as if one pane “disconnects” from the syntax engine. Switching syntax modes manually does nothing. Only reopening the file or restarting Sublime fixes it. This has happened often enough that I’m starting to suspect a deeper issue with the syntax engine or one of the packages I’m using.

Overall, I’m trying to figure out if these issues stem from Sublime’s indexing system, a package conflict, a corrupted workspace, or something else entirely. I’ve already tried removing and reinstalling packages, clearing cache folders, and rebuilding the index, but nothing has fully resolved the problems. If anyone here has experience dealing with inconsistent indexing, broken syntax highlighting, or unreliable project-wide search in Sublime Text—especially with large JSON datasets I’d really appreciate your insights. This Texas Roadhouse menu project depends on fast and stable editing, and I’d like to get Sublime Text back to its usual reliable performance. sorry for long post

[bschaaf]

Which version of Sublime Text are you running and on what platform?

Sublime Text begins the indexing process and gets stuck at certain JSON files (specifically the large menu-data files). Sometimes it completes after several minutes, but other times the editor becomes sluggish until I manually restart it. I’ve tried excluding folders and tweaking indexing settings, but the inconsistency remains.

The indexer has a file-size limit of 4MB. On my laptop indexing a 4MB C++ file takes roughly 1.6s, and while that’s not particularly fast I wouldn’t call it stuck either.

The indexer also skips Plain Text, JSON and YAML files, as those don’t contain any symbols to begin with. Are you sure the files it gets stuck on are actually JSON files?

Additionally, I have a hard time seeing how indexing makes the editor sluggish. Indexing happens entirely in the background, and once its done the index just sits in memory. Does the sluggishness still happen if you turn off indexing? (Using the checkbox in the dialog under Help > Indexing Status…).

In addition to that, I’m seeing syntax highlighting break randomly in several file types. For example, some of my HTML files that contain embedded JS (used for menu item filters and pricing logic) display incorrect colors, especially around blocks.

Is this actually random or do you have an example you could provide?

JSON highlighting also occasionally loses structure, turning everything into plain text after a few edits. This usually fixes itself after closing and reopening the file, but it slows down development and makes spotting errors harder while updating menu items and nutritional data.

The only time ST stops syntax highlighting is when a line becomes too long, but that can’t be fixed by reopening the file. There’s no other situations where ST reverts to plain text by itself. Perhaps you have a plugin doing this. Have you tried safe mode?

Sublime Text sometimes fails to return results that I know exist in the project.

This usually indicates that a file is being excluded by a setting. Is it perhaps a gitignored file or a file ignored by "binary_file_patterns"? Can you see the file in the side-bar?

Other times it returns outdated results, as if it’s not indexing the newest file contents.

Find-in-files does not use any indexing or caching. It’s effectively running grep, so getting old file contents is simply impossible. Perhaps you’re confusing the search results with results from a previous search, as by default find-in-files does not clear the search result buffer between searches.

Clearing the index via the command palette helps occasionally, but the problem keeps returning.

There is no such entry for clearing the index in the command palette. It sounds like you’re having problems with a plugin you’ve installed, and perhaps not the Sublime Text indexer.