Opening a folder with many files causes spyder to freeze

Description

What steps will reproduce the problem?

When opening a folder with many (think 1000 and upwards) files in the ‘files’ pane causes Spyder to completely freeze until loading is completed. While it appears that it does eventually come back to life after loading is completed, many times Windows will tell you the program is frozen and ask whether you want to wait or force quit during the process. For folders with larger amounts of files the waiting time is longer.

Versions

• Spyder version: 4.0.0b4
• Python version: 3.7.1
• Qt version: 5.9.6
• PyQt5 version: 5.9.2
• Operating System: Windows 10

Dependencies

pygments >=2.0    :  2.4.2 (OK)
qdarkstyle >=2.6.4:  2.7 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6    :  2.1.2 (OK)
pyls >=0.27.0     :  0.28.0 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0   :  5.5.0 (OK)
pandas >=0.13.1   :  0.24.2 (OK)
numpy >=1.7       :  1.16.4 (OK)
sympy >=0.7.3     :  None (NOK)
cython >=0.21     :  None (NOK)
qtconsole >=4.5.2 :  4.5.3 (OK)
IPython >=4.0     :  7.7.0 (OK)
matplotlib >=2.0.0:  3.1.0 (OK)
pylint >=0.25     :  2.3.1 (OK)

[SandeepShaw2017]

Facing similar problem … have upgraded to 4.1.15 … still facing the same problem … console freezes when os.chdir to a folder having large number of files …

[ccordoba12]

Note: A simple yet effective solution for this could be to disable showing icons per file type in the Files pane if we detect there are more than X files in the current directory.