diff --git a/core/includes/file.inc b/core/includes/file.inc
index b9c217b..8c2e13a 100644
--- a/core/includes/file.inc
+++ b/core/includes/file.inc
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@
 use Drupal\Component\PhpStorage\FileStorage;
 use Drupal\Component\Utility\Bytes;
 use Drupal\Core\File\FileSystem;
+use Drupal\Core\Site\Settings;
 use Drupal\Core\StreamWrapper\PublicStream;
 use Drupal\Core\StreamWrapper\PrivateStream;
 
@@ -945,6 +946,19 @@ function file_scan_directory($dir, $mask, $options = array(), $depth = 0) {
     $dir_has_slash = (substr($dir, -1) === '/');
   }
 
+  // By default, when there is no explicit 'nomask' option, do not check for
+  // files in common special-purpose directories. The folders here are front-end
+  // related and they have been added to avoid issues with Drupal recursive
+  // scanning. In this case, we added node_modules and bower_components. This
+  // also improves performance on frontend builds.
+  if (!isset($options['nomask'])) {
+    $ignore_directories = Settings::get('drupal_file_scan_ignore_directories', [
+      'node_modules',
+      'bower_components',
+    ]);
+    $options['nomask'] = '/^' . implode('|', $ignore_directories) . '$/';
+  }
+
   $options['key'] = in_array($options['key'], array('uri', 'filename', 'name')) ? $options['key'] : 'uri';
   $files = array();
   // Avoid warnings when opendir does not have the permissions to open a
diff --git a/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Extension/Discovery/RecursiveExtensionFilterIterator.php b/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Extension/Discovery/RecursiveExtensionFilterIterator.php
index a74dcfc..fc9b445 100644
--- a/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Extension/Discovery/RecursiveExtensionFilterIterator.php
+++ b/core/lib/Drupal/Core/Extension/Discovery/RecursiveExtensionFilterIterator.php
@@ -71,6 +71,8 @@ class RecursiveExtensionFilterIterator extends \RecursiveFilterIterator {
     'js',
     'misc',
     'templates',
+    'node_modules',
+    'bower_components',
     // Legacy subdirectories.
     'includes',
     // Test subdirectories.