Changes in Insomnia 8.0+ regarding needing an account and local/cloud data migration.

[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.

[carlosaherrera]

Thanks. I downgraded. I have my configs back. Is there an alternative besides Postman the community recommends? I have no interest in using Insomnia if this is their new model.

[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 no data sharing concern with Insomnia.

[Kryan90]

so there is data sharing concern with Insomniaat least you accidentally got to the right conclusion

[mozart27]

And what prevented you from notifying us about the account requirement before you did this upgrade?

[LukeCarrier]

I don't want to share my projects with you -- I want to keep them in my repo alongside my code. Why won't you respect your users' right to privacy and to use the software the way they already have been? Why did you break our workflows?

[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.

[jmichaelward]

Cancelling my paid account due to these user-hostile changes.

[BellaMay95]

Regarding the git vs. GitHub mentioned earlier, I had to log into my personal GitHub account on my personal device because my work blocks contributions to outside repos on our organization accounts. That's how serious companies get regarding data in the cloud. It's not just about company policies being stuck in 2003, some companies are in a heavily-regulated space where something as innocent as creating a cloud account and storing data (that yes, would include our oAuth credentials and internal endpoints) would result in getting fined.
I also want to chime in on my experience. Previously, I had no reason to expect such a large update and as such I had left the auto-update setting turned on. My group started using Insomnia only because Postman had failed security review due to online accounts and we were directed to use Insomnia instead. I expect we'll receive an email directing us off of Insomnia soon enough.
I expected nothing out of the ordinary with the upgrade. I don't even remember if I was presented with the modal prior to the login screen that was supposed to give me the option to export my data. All I know is that once I exited the login screen I realized that all my data was gone. When I tried to import saved collections I had as backup the import would keep failing so even my exported backups didn't save me.
Thankfully I found the threads talking about the downgrade option, otherwise I would've lost multiple days of productivity trying to get my data back. All in all this is a terrible user experience. Like others mentioned, we can understand needing to make money and if you pitch your use case and additional features I'm sure a bunch of non-regulated companies would've loved to sign up for your organizational plan and forked over a bunch of cash. Pretending like you stole all our data and will only give it back if we create an account is highly unethical at best and possibly illegal at worst. The comment that used the "ransomware" word did sound a bit harsh...but if the boot fits, wear it.

[jftaulbee]

When downgrading to a previous version, why does it keep force update to 8.0 when I restart the client without me ever approving the upgrade? I can't just keep using an older version to avoid this headache?

[nchevsky]

You can; just turn off auto-update before downgrading.

[jftaulbee]

Ahh, great it works now. Thanks @nchevsky !

[crestonbunch]

The responses from @subnetmarco in this thread should tell everyone what they need to know about the future of Insomnia. Even if they fix all the UX problems now, it's tainted forever and Kong can't be trusted. It's time to move on. RIP Insomnia, you had a good run. 👋

[mattjm]

Downgraded, turned off automatic updates. Warned my colleagues not to upgrade. 👍

[sbwp]

Second time this year I've suddenly lost hours of productivity having to switch API testing tools after finding out the one I'm using no longer supports offline usage. At least with Postman, I found out and then switched before losing my data. This time I just updated and found all of my data gone. I guess I have until IT flags my machine for having out of date software to make an alternative.

[subnetmarco]

Insomnia 8.1 Update

We are about to release a new version of Insomnia (v8.1) which will be released today and available GA, which introduces the following capabilities:

• Plugins are re-enabled in the local Scratch Pad.
• Clarifying that Scratch Pad is local only.
• Allowing the user to export their data in 5 places:
  • Initial onboarding wizard (this exists today)
  • From the signup/login form by clicking "Export data and more"
  • From the Scratch Pad by clicking "Export all data" in the footer.
  • From the Preferences, by clicking "Export all data".
  • When creating an account for the first time.
• Confirming twice the activation of the end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) cloud synchronization:
  • In the onboarding wizard (this exists today)
  • When creating an account or logging in for the first time and there is data to migrate.

In addition to this we will also ship today a fully automated flow for resetting the secret passphrase in case it was lost/forgotten.

Once released, Insomnia 8.1 will be available in the releases list, or automatically if the auto-update is enabled.

Insomnia 8.x

We did these changes to support the collaboration capabilities and enterprise requirements announced today: https://konghq.com/blog/product-releases/insomnia-8-0

• The new local Scratch Pad in Insomnia
• Free Insomnia Sync available to everyone
• Real-time collaboration with live presence
• Organizations, RBAC and EE SSO (SAML + OIDC)
• AI-generated API tests (beta)
• Support for SSE APIs (Server Side Events) in addition to REST, gRPC, GraphQL and WebSockets 💻
• And more

I understand this may not be the right audience for these capabilities, but this is why we are securely synchronizing with the cloud to enable these new capabilities.

Local-only mode (Scratch Pad, Git Sync, potential Local Vault)

As a result of these changes, Insomnia 8.x supports local-only storage without requiring an account in Scratch Pad, which is limited to one collection. This also allowed us to clean up lots of legacy, messy, code that was failing constantly and was a huge strain on the team.

You can also activate Git Sync and keep your data away from the cloud.

I hear that you want a local-only mode for everything perhaps without using Git, and not only on Scratch Pad. To do this, we need to seriously reconsider the overall architecture of Insomnia locally and how that can be enabled with users that still want to collaborate.

We may ship some form of Local Vault for Insomnia, but it will have to be written from scratch because what we had was not working and needs to support all the new mocking, testing and scripting capabilities we will introduce moving forward.

Local Vault could also ship before EoY based on demand, but in the meantime you can keep your data local with Scratch Pad, Git Sync, or by running an older version of Insomnia.

[expe-elenigen]

I just don't understand, it looks like the notion of Workspace just disappeared in the Scratch Pad mode and if I export all my workspaces, the import fails, so I have to import them one by one in Scratch Pad and still fails for many, but it feels like it's merging them. I had to revert again to an older version.

Error: Project not found. at a2 (file:///Applications/Insomnia.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/index-334620de.js:17:108051) at Module.l (file:///Applications/Insomnia.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/import-9dfc1356.js:1:906) at async d8 (file:///Applications/Insomnia.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/index-334620de.js:31:3691) at async Be (file:///Applications/Insomnia.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/index-334620de.js:30:18468)

[mkkhedawat]

I have been fan of Insomnia for many years. Responsible for lot of people around me to migrate to Insomnia. It is very sad to say good bye with offline version having vision of limited capabilities. Whatever had been the reason, I wanted like to thank all devs who made this wonderful product reality in first place.

To me there is no alternative, Will need to re-invent.
So I did a fork to live with it - https://github.com/mkkhedawat/rest.ground/releases . Still in alpha.
Not expecting big feature requests, Only security fixes if needed.

Thanks again.

[ljohnston]

[cspeidel]

Let's see how long it takes someone to use ChatGPT and create an Insomnia to Bruno config converter ;-)

[subnetmarco]

Update 2 & Demo

As a further update to the previous one, Insomnia 8.1 has been released with a better way to export and import data.

You can use it in the cloud, or you can use it locally with Scratch Pad, and here is a video that explains how to do both:

Watch the demo

[carlosaherrera]

My entire development team is actively discussing options to move off of Insomnia because of this.

[yuvalsteuer]

I used to work for the Israeli Military. because of these exact reasons we chose to go with step instead of Insomnia. (linked here).

Ran on some pretty heavy projects. definitely military-grade haha!

recommended

[subnetmarco]

Locking this conversation as it became a spam post board, sometimes rude and offensive as well.

• If you want to have a productive conversation on how to move from here, I discussed it at Changes in Insomnia 8.0+ regarding needing an account and local/cloud data migration. #6590 (comment)

• If you want to learn how to use Insomnia locally, you can read this comment with video: Changes in Insomnia 8.0+ regarding needing an account and local/cloud data migration. #6590 (comment)

• If you need clarification:

  • Insomnia 8.0+ supports multiple projects and collections in the cloud or outside of the cloud via Git Sync. If your organization doesn't allow data to be stored in the cloud, Git Sync is the way to go. Or you can get in touch with our team and learn more about our end-to-end encryption and overall cloud security of the product to pass a security audit.
  • You can still use Insomnia locally with Scratch Pad, and you can export all of your data at anytime with Insomnia 8.1.

For issues or more feedback (productive) feel free to start a conversation or open a GitHub issue.

[subnetmarco]

An update on local projects, #6626.

TL;DR: They are coming back in mid-October in Insomnia 8.3.

[subnetmarco]

Local projects are now back in Insomnia 8.3 and they are available today. This means that with Insomnia v8.3 and above you can choose between:

• Local Vault: projects are 100% hosted locally.
• Cloud Sync: projects are end-to-end encrypted and synched to the cloud for collaboration.
• Git Sync: projects can leverage a 3rd party Git repository without going through the cloud.

More information here.