Azure Storage Explorer stuck on loading

Updated 18 August 2026

The window opens, the spinner turns, and the account tree never fills in. Sometimes it is subscriptions that never load; sometimes a single container spins forever.

If subscriptions never load

• Sign out and back in. An expired refresh token often shows up as an endless spinner rather than an error.
• Clear the cache (Help → Clear Cache) and restart.
• Check how many subscriptions your account has. On tenants with a lot of them, the initial enumeration is slow enough to look hung. Unchecking subscriptions you do not need makes every later start faster.

If one container never loads

Listing is paged, and a container with a very large number of blobs under a single prefix takes a long time to page through. Narrow it: use the prefix search rather than scrolling, or attach the container directly instead of walking down from the account.

If it is the network in between

A proxy that inspects TLS will slow or stall listing calls. Test the same account from az storage blob list on the same machine — if the CLI is fast and the app is not, the difference is in the app or its proxy handling, not in Azure.

Getting to the data while you sort it out

Attaching the storage account with an access key skips subscription enumeration entirely — the app goes straight to that one account's containers. Portal → storage account → Security + networking → Access keys, then Connect → Storage account or service.

The same reasoning applies to any tool that reads blobs directly with a key, including the IDE plugin listed below: with no subscription list to enumerate, there is nothing to hang on.