SourceTree: Is there any way to turn off file preview / diff on a file or file type?
Asked by Aaron Cammarata:

I've got a large file that happens to be stored in text (Adobe Illustrator), and every time I make even a tiny change the entire file gets previewed with green/red lines in SourceTree. It brings ST to a crawl for 20 seconds, while it goes line by line through the file for changes. I really don't need to see the file previewed at all, so is there any way to tell ST that I'm not interested in previewing or diffing the file? I would be happy to give up previewing on all files of type .ai if necessary.

This is on Mac, if it matters.


Answers:
author: Aaron Cammarata
body: Thanks to Steve Samuels, who answered it in [this thread](/questions/327139/turn-off-diff-preview-pane).

Use the Diff panel in preferences, edit filter by file type, add the file type (ex: "\*.ai"), and then RESTART SOURCE TREE for it to take effect.

comments: author: gianpaj
body: This works. Would be great though if you could disable the diff preview ONLY when selecting multiple files.

Comparing a single png works fine on my Macbook Pro with SSD, but when you select 5 or more it just grinds to a halt.


author: paulvddool
body: A bit of an old thread, but it was the top search result when I Googled, so I thought I just leave my solution here.

I too had an issue where SourceTree crawled to a snail pace when there was a big file in my changes. It's a file I want to commit, but don't need to review. Ignoring it would be the solution.

I couldn't find the "filter by file type" mentioned in the answer. But entering the exact name of the file in "Ignore File Patterns" worked (after restart). See screenshot.

![Screen Shot 2018-08-01 at 3.33.45 PM.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/28402i880CB07E93821207/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screen Shot 2018-08-01 at 3.33.45 PM.png")

comments: author: Andrei Bouariu
body: You just won the achievement for the best comment on the Internet. I didn't need to add package-lock.json to the ignore file pattern, mine was about 600 KB and set the Size limit (text) to 100 KB.

Boom, package-lock.json no longer previewed.


author: gsong
body: There seems to have been a regression on this feature in v3.0 (200). \`pacakge-lock.json\` is no longer ignored for diff preview.


author: Torsten D
body: Hi there,

I am using the Windows version 1.6.11.0. Is this still in there. Cannot find it.

I can find a filter to show only certain files in the unstaged/staged section.

But I would like to disable the preview of the diff on certain files (I am having compiled files which take about 5 seconds to show on the right (preview) panel). These I would like to hide.

comments: author: fireice007
body: Max File Count0 to disable


author: apautrot
body: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you ! THANK YOU !

I was going crazy when multi-selecting files one by one, having sometimes to wait dozens of seconds between each new addition to the selection.... CRAZY !


author: Latheesan Sivarasathurai
body: I solved different issue using this fix. My SourceTree running on Windows would become unresponsive when it comes across a minified file. I turned off the Max File Count, then changed it to 1. Now it is working like new. :)

comments: author: Daniel M
body: This did not work for me. Large minified files still hanging Windows sourcetree. Even after restarting sourcetree,


author: Latheesan Sivarasathurai
body: My suggestion will limit number of files in preview to 1. It will still preview the file. You can try adjusting the Size Limit (Binary) value. It is default to 10MB. You can try reducing it to 1MB.


Tags: diff

preview