enshittification / needing an account

[ChristianSch]

Expected Behavior

I would like to be able to use insomnia without an account or be warned BEFORE an update that you'll lock me out of my stuff.

Actual Behavior

you just locked me out

Reproduction Steps

No response

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the issue tracker for this problem.

Additional Information

I really really do know that this is not the place, but wtf guys, come on? Have you learned nothing from Postman? Their enshittification gave you the traffic to grow in the first place and now you're doing the same shit?

Insomnia Version

v8.0.0

What operating system are you using?

macOS

Operating System Version

macOS sonoma

Installation method

download

Last Known Working Insomnia version

< 8.0.0

[imitko]

I have same problem too, all my projects was vanished, even worse the login tell me to use password for old account and no even way to reset it.

[elevesque-nexapp]

Same issue here, I restarted to apply what appeared to be a regular update and now I apparently don't have access to my projects!? Needless to say I'm quite frustrated.

The whole reason I used Insomnia was because it wasn't trying to push to create an account. If that's the way things are going to be I'll just return to Postman.

[erebor]

Same here.

[bholm]

For anyone affected, you can downgrade to 2023.5.8 and get back all your projects for now but I guess I'll need to start investigating alternatives now. I am very disappointed with this move.

[alexandrudumencu]

Same here.
At least let me export the requests before locking me out.
I tried setting up an account via GitHub, but it fails.

[jeffwalter-rum]

Time to fork.

[lfleal]

Same here. I was in the middle of testing when I was prompted to restart, then I lost access to everything. I turn off auto updated and downgraded to last release. I confirmed that auto update is still off. I have access to my projects again. I will be migrating off of Insomnia to another solution. Same here I used Postman and migrated here for the same reasons.

For those that just got locked out. 1) turn off update 2) downgrade to 2023.5.7

[mkdillard]

Yeah, I have to agree here, this was completely unexpected. I clicked though to the scratchpad to avoid the account sign up and all my stuff was gone? If you can copy the data to associate with an account online you can copy the data to keep it local and anonymous. This was an incredibly short sighted decision to put folks in this position, especially without any warning that local collections would likewise be removed/hidden.

I was excited to have Insomnia as a Postman alternative where I could keep all my stuff local and not in the cloud, but now I guess I may have to start looking again.

[erebor]

Good reminder to export data while you can:

[geoshak]

Same problem here.

[petehl]

For anyone affected, you can downgrade to 2023.5.8 and get back all your projects for now but I guess I'll need to start investigating alternatives now. I am very disappointed with this move.

What great incentive to turn off updates, and begin to look for a simpler alternative.

[subnetmarco]

More info here.

The data can be optionally exported before continuing with the cloud synchronization. The data can also be exported after logging in.

The data is fully end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) in the cloud for all users, nobody but you can access it, which is why we request a passphrase and why losing the passphrase will cause the data to be lost.

With Git sync the data never goes to the cloud but stays in the Git repository.

The challenge is that we cannot continue to offer a great product with all these capabilities while working on an abstraction layer that supports two different storage backends for all data in Insomnia, adds too much complexity to the whole product. Unlike Postman, the data is end to end encrypted, so there is data sharing concern with Insomnia.

[smnbbrv]

@subnetmarco that's what should be told before the upgrade is automatically applied, shouldn't it?

[mkdillard]

The challenge is that we cannot continue to offer a great product with all these capabilities while working on an abstraction layer that supports two different storage backends for all data in Insomnia, adds too much complexity to the whole product.

Yet 8.0 appears to offer an offline anonymous scratchpad and your update didn't offer an option to migrate existing local collection to that, just the cloud? So local data storage is being offered or not?

[ChristianSch]

@subnetmarco You absolutely knew what this would cause and you absolutely know that there will be commotion and people will move on. You just hope that enough stick around for money to be made. Being a CTO myself I get the business case. But you lost a lot of credibility today. So much so that (imho) this hurts Kong business standing. How can I trust you folks? How do I know that you are a reliable partner and support me and my developers in our work? Instead you pull the same shit Postman did. We'll be looking into alternatives.

[subnetmarco]

@smnbbrv it was told, there is a wizard that shows up that tells that the data will be synchronized to the cloud and even give an opportunity to export it.

[mkdillard]

You mean the wizard that didn't appear until after the update was accepted?

[bobdanielson]

@subnetmarco My employer has explicit policies against storing our data in someone else's cloud. Even if the data is encrypted since we cannot audit it for compliance it will not be allowed. Insomnia is going to be completely blocked even for individual license holders here in very short order with this update.

[subnetmarco]

@mkdillard the Scratch Pad is heavily limited in capability because of this, which is not the experience we want to give to Insomnia users moving forward. The whole storage backend being local also caused data migration issues pretty much since Insomnia was born.

If your is a privacy concern, the data is end-to-end encrypted on every user account, including the Free ones.

[subnetmarco]

@mkdillard the wizard that shows up after updating the Insomnia binary doesn't synchronize the data until after continuing, and it shows an export capability to export the data locally before doing so.

[subnetmarco]

For anybody where this is a problem: you can download an old version of Insomnia and also export the data from there. The data is not lost.

[mkdillard]

the wizard that shows up after updating the Insomnia binary

That's the point though, the wizard that explains what's changed and where our data will be going didn't show up until after the update. We had no way of knowing that 8.0 would be such a drastic change of direction before clicking to apply the update.

As an aside, my feedback as a user is:
My number 1 criteria for choosing Insomnia was the local offline collections, I came here from Postman after they pulled the same stunt forcing everyone to cloud. It's clear that's not a use case you're interested in supporting, and as nice as Insomnia has been, it's no longer a viable choice for my REST client needs.

The way you all surprised everyone with this update suddenly (at least I haven't seen communication about this huge change to data storage) also leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

[ClickyCoyote]

The data can be optionally exported before continuing with the cloud synchronization. The data can also be exported after logging in.

The data is fully end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) in the cloud for all users, nobody but you can access it, which is why we request a passphrase and why losing the passphrase will cause the data to be lost.

With Git sync the data never goes to the cloud but stays in the Git repository.

The challenge is that we cannot continue to offer a great product with all these capabilities while working on an abstraction layer that supports two different storage backends for all data in Insomnia, adds too much complexity to the whole product. Unlike Postman, the data is end to end encrypted, so there is data sharing concern with Insomnia.

I was never given an option to export, I was presented with the login screen immediately upon upgrading. Additionally, I even tried logging in via GitHub and after a few 500 errors, got to a screen showing my account was being migrated but nothing ever happened.

[smnbbrv]

@smnbbrv it was told, there is a wizard that shows up that tells that the data will be synchronized to the cloud and even give an opportunity to export it.

@subnetmarco not really. I got a popup - version 8 is ready and I need to restart. Everything else happened after the upgrade. What I have now is empty scratchpad with no option to proceed

[AlaricWhitney]

I switched away from Postman due to the same stunt. It appears that I will have to look for an alternative now that all of my collections are gone and being held hostage without any warning.

[bobdanielson]

The data can be optionally exported before continuing with the cloud synchronization. The data can also be exported after logging in.
The data is fully end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) in the cloud for all users, nobody but you can access it, which is why we request a passphrase and why losing the passphrase will cause the data to be lost.
With Git sync the data never goes to the cloud but stays in the Git repository.
The challenge is that we cannot continue to offer a great product with all these capabilities while working on an abstraction layer that supports two different storage backends for all data in Insomnia, adds too much complexity to the whole product. Unlike Postman, the data is end to end encrypted, so there is data sharing concern with Insomnia.

I was never given an option to export, I was presented with the login screen immediately upon upgrading. Additionally, I even tried logging in via GitHub and after a few 500 errors, got to a screen showing my account was being migrated but nothing ever happened.

Worse yet I now know of multiple people who had closed Insomnia without accepting the update, but because auto-updates was on their client restarted and they were immediately on version 8 and blocked by the cloud account dialog which they are not allowed by policy to use. The only recourse is to downgrade and disable updates. Many are already throwing their hands up in the air and looking for compliant alternatives.

[javierpaez]

same issue 👎

[timharek]

There is Restfox, haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to give it a shot now:
https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox

[4ekki]

I was promoting Insomnia in my company for ~5 years. Good old days, :sigh:.

[ChristianSch]

Another data point: one of my devs didn't know that their data will be cloud-synced. So he accidentally leaked secrets. Great job, kong 👏 I just can't comprehend this fiasco

[CleverCoder]

same

[Aeolun]

I just don't understand how you could possibly have thought this was a good idea? What exactly did you think was the reason people used Insomnia instead of Postman? If I wanted everything could synced and shit I wouldn't have needed to migrate off Postman in the first place...

[CleverCoder]

Time to fork.

Brilliant. Seriously, has someone created a fork yet?

It needs a new, clever name... something that respects the open source community and won't exploit the users. Honoring "keep it simple", and "do the right thing". Here's some ideas:

• Awakened
• RESTGuard
• TranquilREST
  🤷

[lodi-g]

Hi @subnetmarco,

Good that you want to improve users' life. Not good that you force it onto everyone.

I won't repeat what everyone said (E2EE or not - I won't sign in), but rather add this: I contributed to Insomnia in the past and would have loved to contribute again. I'll not consider it anymore with this move.

[GeeDat]

I keep hearing that I can downgrade to a previous version of Insomnia and get my projects and environments back. How do I do that?

[lh0817]

Hey Guys,

Here a downgrade instruction as temporary workaround for the constellation Ubuntu/Snap Insomnia package:

sudo snap revert insomnia
sudo snap refresh --hold insomnia

The second command holds refreshes of insomnia indefinitely.

I hope it helps some people to be able to work today.

[alinmiron]

Stick the cloud up your arse! I was using Insomnnia because it was not forcing me to do crap. Hope for a giant solar flare that would fk up all the "clouds".

[bcersows]

I keep hearing that I can downgrade to a previous version of Insomnia and get my projects and environments back. How do I do that?

Depending on your system.

Here's some previous comments' instructions:

• Ubuntu: enshittification / needing an account #6577 (comment)
• Mac/Homebrew: enshittification / needing an account #6577 (comment)

Important to immediately disable auto-update after downgrading.

[krlz-dev]

Your are going to become postman soon :O and this was one of the main reasons I run from postman to Insomnia, to avoid all this nonsense, I lose many of the things I was working in this release, moving to https://hoppscotch.io/ for now

[Mark-Labuschagne]

Honestly, I moved from postman to Insomnia to have a simple and local API tester. Insomnia was perfect, I loved it. What a shame.

[tobias-feil-plana]

You should be ashamed of yourself. Insomnia was a trusted name for many developers in my friend circle and some of them were converted to Insomnia by me, being a nice alternative to Postman that doesn't suck your data. Now we're back to square one and an alternative like that doesn't exist anymore.

[Windowsfreak]

Insomnia is DEAD after this update.

Many people moved over from Postman, just to discover today that it's just its evil sister.

[mashaal]

oh fuck

[Rzpeg]

I will have to explore a self-hosted https://hoppscotch.io/ now.

[aniforprez]

Man how was the flow so poorly thought out? I've been working with some local collections for almost years now and all of that data just disappearing in the scratch pad almost gave me a heart attack. I made an account just so I could export my collections because the "wizard" doesn't let me go back to the export button and the scratch pad doesn't automatically import my collections that I NEVER synced to the cloud. Now my collections are taking up space on your servers just because of me being forced into this. I'm sure SOMEONE asked for this but then why was almost zero consideration given for local users before someone made this thread? Plugins not working was an oversight?

I'm sorry I'm adding to the dogpile but I'm thoroughly disappointed in this decision and will join the droves of people looking for alternatives. I didn't ask for this and now I'm forced to look at an ugly purple banner for being a plebian refusing to opt into the cloud "experience". This is very, very disheartening. Please know that all this complaining is cause people love Insomnia and want it to be good but this is a severe downgrade.

Edit: I'm finding out you cannot even delete your collections from the server through the website. You HAVE to log into the Insomnia desktop app and delete your collections from there. I cannot delete the automatically created organisation or my account from the website. My only recourse is to delete my account completely in the hope that it also deletes my organisation and, transitively, my collections. Automatically dumping everything on my private workspace to a cloud, encrypted or not, sure was a decision huh.

I cannot believe how this app has transitioned to literally be the same as Postman overnight. Just as Postman also deleted their scratchpad and thoroughly gimped their offline capabilities, I have no doubt this will be the path for Insomnia. I'm completely migrating off this app. I'm checking out Bruno if anyone's interested.

Edit 2: I just got an email saying I'm not a collaborator on my Personal Workspace. Not that the workspace was deleted. I'm assuming now my collections are just stuck on the cloud permanently. I created another account with the same email and password and now the default workspace doesn't have my collections. There's no way to delete a workspace despite me being the sole "collaborator" and owner of a workspace. The create account workflow is also busted and doesn't connect properly to the desktop app. It doesn't properly redirect the auth credentials to the app after you select a subscription which means I have to copy paste the login URL. This is just poor form all around folks.

[baldurh]

Can someone clarify for me, if I upgrade to 8.0.0:

1. All my collections disappear?
2. I’m forced to sign up?
3. Will the collections appear again if I sign up?
4. If I sign up, are all my collections automatically uploaded to the cloud?
5. When collections are uploaded to the cloud, does that include the environment variables?

I’m mostly worried that at my workplace people will—without thinking—upgrade and sign up and all their collections—including environments—will be uploaded to the cloud.

[aniforprez]

Can someone clarify for me, if I upgrade to 8.0.0:

1. All my collections disappear?
2. I’m forced to sign up?
3. Will the collections appear again if I sign up?
4. If I sign up, are all my collections automatically uploaded to the cloud?
5. When collections are uploaded to the cloud, does that include the environment variables?

I’m mostly worried that at my workplace people will—without thinking—upgrade and sign up and all their collections—including environments—will be uploaded to the cloud.

1. As of writing this comment, all your collections are locked behind creating an account and are not moved to the scratchpad. Which means
2. Yes, you are forced to sign up to
3. See your collections again because
4. They are automatically uploaded to the cloud
5. Which does, mercifully, include your env vars

Yes @baldurh, arguably the worst thing about this whole fiasco is all your data being dumped to the cloud without your consent. They claim it's all end-to-end-encrypted behind a password you're forced to create but I did not ask for this so it's a moot point

[baldurh]

1. As of writing this comment, all your collections are locked behind creating an account and are not moved to the scratchpad. Which means
2. Yes, you are forced to sign up to
3. See your collections again because
4. They are automatically uploaded to the cloud
5. Which does, mercifully, include your env vars

Yes @baldurh, arguably the worst thing about this whole fiasco is all your data being dumped to the cloud without your consent. They claim it's all end-to-end-encrypted behind a password you're forced to create but I did not ask for this so it's a moot point

Thanks @aniforprez!

[ghost]

I would only like to say a big thank you for this update, because I would never have discovered https://hurl.dev/ without this change.

[DylanDelobel]

I was going to export all my Postman collection to Insomnia,
Look like I will find another solution

[Ma-ve]

Much obliged turning Insomnia into ransomware! Ie., holding my data hostage unless I pay for it with my email address 👍.

[alfredoxperez]

Wow. I had a complex setup of requests. I heavily relied on Insomnia and was working to present this tool to a company for everyone to use with the setup I created, and now just gone. To say this situation is frustrating is an understatement.