nvim-tree - [NvimTree] File system watcher failed (EMFILE) for path $path, halting watcher.

[emrebdr]

Hello, I'm working on a large php project, approximately ~80k files. But 2 minutes after opening this project on neovim, I get this error.

[NvimTree] File system watcher failed (EMFILE) for path $path, halting watcher.
[NvimTree] File system watcher failed (EMFILE) for path $path, halting watcher.
[NvimTree] File system watcher failed (EMFILE) for path $path, halting watcher.
...
...
...

Error Image

I get this error for all files in the project.

I don't use many plugins in neovim, only these plugins are installed => telescope, harpoon, lsp, nvim-treesitter

solutions I have tried:

- ulimit -n unlimited unlimited
- launchctl maxfiles unlimited unlimited
- update parser and treesitter

config:

  {
  	“nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter”,
  	opts = {
  		ensure_installed = {
  			“vim”, ‘lua’, ‘vimdoc’, ”php”
  		},
  	},
  }

Do you have any idea why this is happening or a solution? thank you 🙏

[alex-courtis]

EMFILE normally happens on node creation and will report:

fs.inotify.max_user_watches exceeded, see https://github.com/nvim-tree/nvim-tree.lua/wiki/Troubleshooting

This is the first time we've seen it on an event. I'll look into updating that error message.

Either way, the fix linked should work.

[alex-courtis]

#3028 added the message.

[emrebdr]

Heyy thank you for your answer, I tried the solution you suggested, but it didn't work and I still have the same problem, but the error message became a bit more detailed. That's why I added the screenshot to the question

[alex-courtis]

What did you set fs.inotify.max_user_watches and fs.inotify.max_user_instances to?