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?

• [X] 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 👎

[crestonbunch]

I went to Insomnia because I couldn't live with Postman. Where do I go now?

[subnetmarco]

I want to point out this:

1) The data is never migrated to the cloud unless you create an account or login. It's still local.

2) The data can be exported with an older version of Insomnia or it can be exported during the onboarding wizard that we added for Insomnia 8.0. The collection can also be re-imported into Scratch Pad, which will keep the data of the collection forever local without requiring an account.

[crestonbunch]

The data is never migrated to the cloud unless you create an account or login. It's still local.

The only option to remain local is to use the "scratchpad". The scratch pad does not contain previous data. The update completely breaks existing workflows if you do not create an account. It is unnacceptable.

[codeadict]

Welp back to curl folks

[clayton-pierce-bayer]

I was thinking their nag to update was very pervasive. Now it makes sense why.

[pawel-kuras]

need link of the fork we plan to move over to.

[artiebob]

Time to fork.

If someone wants to create a product that doesn't store your data externally I know many people willing to pay for it.

[wreppun]

it can be exported during the onboarding wizard that we added for Insomnia 8.0

I mean, if you think that tiny bolded link (which disappears, forever, once you hit continue) is an adequate path for users to take, that explains a lot about how this whole fiasco happened in the first place.

"hiring, thinking, coding"

[RayJSeth]

Time to fork.

If someone wants to create a product that doesn't store your data externally I know many people willing to pay for it.

Not affiliated with any of these projects, just anecdote. My journey has been Postman => Insomnia => Restfox. Just made that third jump today and everything ported over fine and looks to be working great. 🤷

[erraggy]

What an amazing introduction to Kong's product offerings! I went from a happy user of Insomnia that was sharing how great it was with all of my colleagues, to a confused and upset online comment writer in just one short week! 🥳

Interestingly enough, I had just migrated to a new laptop and was overjoyed yesterday evening when I completed my development environment and closed my laptop for the night. I opened my laptop today to find that Insomnia has Amnesia and could not locate my data.

Needless to say...

N O T A G O O D L O O K

👎🏻 👎🏻

[HauLuu]

I want to point out this:

1. The data is never migrated to the cloud unless you create an account or login. It's still local.
2. The data can be exported with an older version of Insomnia or it can be exported during the onboarding wizard that we added for Insomnia 8.0. The collection can also be re-imported into Scratch Pad, which will keep the data of the collection forever local without requiring an account.

Why did they make the warning message way too small on the wizard?

Why don't let us use the Scratchpad with old data available?

It's time to move.

[crestonbunch]

I have evangelized Insomnia at my company for many years because I found the experience to be superior to Postman. No longer will I continue. I am now actively discussing alternatives with engineers who have been burned by this.

[lucacri]

This is horrible move that inspire zero confidence in Kong & Insomnia. I just lost 30 mins of work because I updated and needed to figure out why everything was missing, and I'm not uploading any of my API calls to a cloud provider, specially one that just pulled a stunt like this one.

Time to find an alternative, or fork this

[ryber]

There are security departments at large corporations across the world right now trying to figure out how to block their developers from creating accounts and inadvertently uploading all their oauth secrets to someone else's cloud.

[crestonbunch]

The whole storage backend being local also caused data migration issues pretty much since Insomnia was born.

This is so dumb. Syncing is a solved problem. You can do it with iCloud. You can do it with Dropbox. You can do it with rsync, a thumbdrive, a pigeon carrying a thumb drive, honestly anything. Insomnia doesn't need to be in the business of syncing files. Just give us an HTTP client and stay out of our way.

[rtgoodwin]

Complete failure here as well, and deleted the app as I can no longer trust it will only store locally.

[dkapellusch]

Yeah this is absurd. I've always been a huge proponent of Insomnia over alternatives like PostMan. I can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea.

I can't even recover my collections without downgrading, instant uninstall.

[bobdanielson]

I'm watching the fork count slowly climb...

[ljohnston]

This is almost funny. I just migrated to Insomnia from Postman earlier this week because Postman finally enforced the "let's make them all go to the cloud thing". And now this just two days later. Thank goodness I hadn't put much of anything into Insomnia yet!

I work for one of those companies that will never, ever, ever allow us to store this kind of stuff in the cloud. Postman is now off of the approved software list due to their recent changes. Thought Insomnia might be worth looking at as an alternative. Not now.

All of the above aside, this was an unbelievable bush league move. The way it was totally a blindside is unconscionable.

[MaxLithia]

Huge disappointment. Very blatant business strategy not backed by the technical justification.

[williamyeny]

NOT a good move. Most devs have sensitive testing info that should stay local. I would not be comfortable with my data uploaded to "Insomnia Cloud", even if it is encrypted.

[billriess]

Ignoring the fact that everything is cloud-based now (which sucks) my team cannot access anything. When they login it just takes them to the payment screen asking them to upgrade their accounts. They are already part of a paid team organization and their emails are in the list. They have no option to do anything but fill out payment details or logout. So at this point we are paying for an unusable service.

[subnetmarco]

@billriess they can continue with "Free" and still be able to access the team.