IntelliJ started an initiative JEP-382 - Project Lenai to bring Metal to JDK for 2D rendering pipeline. The latest JBR17 builds have Metal support which has substantial improvements. On Mac, as I learned just now, java2d uses OpenGL to render, which openGL has been deprecated on Mac in favor of Metal. I feel every new tool, not just IntelliJ, has some interaction lag, regardless of substantial improvements to hardware, but this is another discussion topic. My issue probably relates to using an external 4K monitor in scaled mode, where many others have the same problem, but the lags, unfortunately, persist in default display mode as well. JetBrains has its runtime with its patches for HiDPI supports, performance improvements, and bugfixes for running the IntelliJ family more smoothly. I have discovered that you can improve the performance by switching IDEA to the latest JDK. I disabled as many plugins as not needed. Over the years, although a tremendously valuable tool, IntelliJ IDEA started to feel slowed down, even on these latest M1 Pro machines. Running IntelliJ IDEA with JDK 17 for Better Render Performance with Metal Wed, Dec 8, 2021

Webstorm for m1