Reducing memory usage

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• Persistent setting and Windows work-around

Bisq is known to be a resource-hungry application, so some users may want to reduce memory usage.

Command-line fix

Reduce Bisq's memory usage by setting a ceiling of 4GB:

JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS="-XX:MaxRAM=4g" /opt/bisq/bin/Bisq

/opt/bisq/bin/Bisq is the default application directory on Linux. If you run another operating system, you'll need to replace that path with the one for your OS.

You can adjust the scaling factor as you wish, of course, and add any runtime options for Bisq as well.

GUI fix

To be able to launch the fix by double clicking an icon, rather than running a command in CLI, you can edit the launcher file to run, instead of the Bisq app directly, a shell script which injects said fix.

1. Create a text file (for example /opt/bisq/Bisq-runner.sh) containing the following code:

#!/bin/bash
JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS="-XX:MaxRAM=4g" /opt/bisq/bin/Bisq

2. Make it executable:

chmod +x /opt/bisq/Bisq-runner.sh

3. Edit the launcher file (/opt/bisq/Bisq.desktop and/or /usr/share/applications/Bisq.desktop) by opening it in a text editor and modifying the Exec line like follows:

Exec=/opt/bisq/Bisq-runner.sh

Historical template from the 14 October 2026 archive · source

Persistent setting and Windows work-around

If you'd rather not specify the RAM parameter every time you start Bisq, you can specify it in Bisq.cfg so it automatically takes effect every time.

First, make sure Bisq is closed.

Your Bisq.cfg file is in the directory with your Bisq binary (this is different from your data directory location). See locations for each OS here.

Navigate to the directory with your Bisq binary. Using Windows as an example, this would be $home\AppData\Roaming\Bisq\.

Bisq.cfg should be in the app directory.

Open that file in a text editor. Look for the [JavaOptions] section, and a line in that section that look something like java-options=-XX:MaxRAM=8g. Change it to java-options=-XX:MaxRAM=4g, or add it if it's not already there.

[JavaOptions]
java-options=-XX:MaxRAM=4g

You can also try disabling the hardware graphics acceleration by adding the following line at the end of the Bisq.cfg

[JVMOptions]
-Dprism.order=sw

Save the file, close it, and then open Bisq.