Hiding "Working locally in Scratch Pad" warning

🙋 Help
1

Hello colleagues,

After a recent update of Postman, I am getting “working locally in scratch pad” warning that takes screen space and draws too much attention. In my organisation we do not rely on workspaces so this warning is not relevant.
Is there any way to hide it from UI?

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Hi @juriy84! Welcome to the community :wave:

Thanks for reaching out and providing your feedback :pray:

Currently, there is no feature that allows to hide the below message from UI.

Screen Shot 2021-01-29 at 5.35.30 pm
Screen Shot 2021-01-29 at 5.35.30 pm824×116 5.6 KB

We track our issues publicly on GitHub and would love for you to file this request there so other customers can also weigh in. Our product managers use that feedback to prioritize and add items to our development roadmap.

Please however note that all the data in Scratch pad is saved locally on your machine and not synced to your account.
To help preventing any accidental data loss, we encourage to utilize workspace and get it synced up with your account :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks again for your feedback! Let me know if you have any other questions :grinning:

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Thank you very much for a suggestion, will definitely do that!

Thanks for the warning regarding local data storage too, we rely on Git to store the changes in the collections, although it requires a little bit of discipline while using it, it is still better than losing data of course.

For some organisation using networking features of Postman is not an option unfortunately, due to restrictions of accessing external services (i.e. some banks and insurance companies that I had a chance to work with had very restrictive policies in this area).

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With version 8.0.3, signed out users will be able to dismiss the warning.

5

Thank you for the option to dismiss the warning!

I see that currently the warning still pops up every time I start the app. Is there a way to dismiss it permanently?

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I just wanted to add (1) a thank-you for being able to hide the warning and (2) a warning of my own. Within the organization I work for, we’d regard it as a violation of security policy to be developing APIs and storing them this way in your workspaces without going through a lengthy approval process first. We already have our own systems for backups and would rather not constantly be badgered and herded into working with sync’d servers. I just had to assist a coworker whose copy started – from his point of view – malfunctioning because he’d created a login but then the system was blocked from logging in and syncing with the external database (thankfully).

Could you please make it much more plain how to work “offline” (read: apart from your workspaces, we’re quite “online”), and not constantly issue the warnings that scratchpad data is only offline as if that’s automatically a bad thing?

Pretty please? =)

I mean, it’s an excellent product, but this latest move to workspaces is only an attractive nuisance at our end. I can see why it’s great for a lot of folks, just emphatically not some of us!

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Same as loos-talia-k and i just want to save the postman files to exist ONLY in our system (a repository besides the code, that all colleagues use) without any online postman storage/logins/sync or such.

I consider Postman a fine tool, but i dislike the company when i discovered how intently it discourages export and offline use to forcefully promote one paid service that does not even do what i need.

Also when using this dialog and after login, a user loses all its entire “scratch pad” and there is no way to find it back or import it except logging out. I’m fine with paying for software i use, but the online-only aspect of Postman is just causing trouble.

Please make it clear how to use it offline, where is the export?

PS.
Please do not try to convince me to use the online experience, storing data there is not an option.
Additional feedback on my first postman online experience:
Also, my test “export download” on your site is stuck for over a day now saying " Zipping ".
Also, my postman app login is unbearably slow, only succesfully worked once, and now fails with out of memory.

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I’d just like to add that I’m also working in a situation where automatically syncing data to the ‘Postman cloud’ would be unacceptable.

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Me too please, as Postman Desktop used to be a key tool for occasional use during REST API development with Scratch Pad API definitions imported from local files - similarly, our security policy is such that we cannot easily justify using cloud based applications without a solid business use case, and unfortunately Postman v9 blocks the ability to issue HTTP GETs, stating that we must use Workspaces instead. Whilst I understand the need for revenue via paid-for offerings, earlier Postman versions allowed full functionally using an entirely local environment.

1 Like
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Posted on the official Postman blog at Announcing the New Lightweight Postman API Client | Postman Blog; cc’d here in case the moderators remove it:

Could I download and test the “brand-new lightweight API client that is designed for single users who just want to make quick API calls through the Postman UI” ?

You say it support HTTP. Is HTTPS supported ?

What commercial model does that come with ?

Can I use that in disconnect / local mode ? My company’s policy, like bjhartin and bobt2020’s in the post on Hiding "Working locally in Scratch Pad" warning - #9 by bobt2020, prohibits uploading my environments to the cloud.

Note that Terms of Service | Postman, 5.5 in particular explicitly states the risks of mistakenly publishing secrets like environments… that’s precisely what many large companies do NOT want to do.

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Hi @fve !

Great questions, thank you for reaching out. :slight_smile:

Could I download and test the “brand-new lightweight API client that is designed for single users who just want to make quick API calls through the Postman UI” ?

To use the lightweight API Client, download the Postman app from the download page. The lightweight API client is available from Postman v10.14. When you open the app, select Switch to lightweight API client .

You say it support HTTP. Is HTTPS supported ?

The HTTP protocol is only really referenced as such in the UI, but it does fully support HTTPS as well.

What commercial model does that come with ?

Not entirely sure what you mean by this. If you’re asking if you can use the free lightweight client for commercial purposes, that’s absolutely fine. That said, the lightweight client does not have the ability to use collections or environments, but otherwise there aren’t any pricing limitations.

Can I use that in disconnect / local mode ?

All of your data in the lightweight API client is stored locally and is not synced online with Postman.

Additionally, we have some helpful information in our Trust Center regarding privacy, security and compliance.
For more extensive needs of Postman, our technical architects and solution engineers can assist you in selecting a Postman plan to meet your company’s specific regulatory requirements. Reach out to migrate@postman.com for further assistance.

Let me know if you have any other questions! :slight_smile:

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Hi Kevin,

I have a few questions for you -

  1. I have been using Postman for a while (v10.17) on Mac, and unable to find Switch to lightweight API client option. Is there an alternative way to switch?

  2. I read in a few posts, that collections and environment files are not supported in Lightweight Postman API client, can you confirm please?

  3. If we use Postman with a free account, would all the collections automatically get upload to cloud workspace?

  4. I know there is migration utility to migrate collections to Postman workspace, do you have any utilities to migrate/export into other languages/frameworks like python etc?

Thanks.

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Hi @rajb !

Great questions, let’s see if I can help! :slight_smile:

  1. If you are signed into an account, you’ll have to sign out to access the lightweight client. After installing Postman, you have the option to create a free Postman account or sign in to your existing one. If you choose to skip creating or signing in to an account, you will enter the lightweight API Client. You’ll also enter the lightweight API Client if you sign out of Postman.

  2. This is true. Environments and collections will require you to be signed in to a Postman account and using a workspace.

  3. Signing into a Postman account will ensure all of your collections and workspaces are synced with the Postman cloud. After you sign in to Postman, you can move your open requests and request history into a workspace where you can collaborate with others in your team.

    Postman has no in-house data centers and uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to manage its data centers’ physical and environmental security; our company’s product data and backups are hosted in the U.S. on AWS servers. We leverage several security and privacy-focused features.

    We strongly recommend that users review our assurance reports available on the Postman Security & Trust Portal. Such reports validate our company’s practices through rigorous third-party evaluations.

  4. You can convert an API request into a code snippet in the language of your choice both on the client and server side.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions :slight_smile:

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Thanks Kevin!

That clarifies a few things.

Need more info on this -

Signing into a Postman account will ensure all of your collections and workspaces are synced with the Postman cloud

What if we are signed in (to free account) and want to keep our collections private (as we don’t use team collaboration feature), is that possible?

Apart from backing up collections and possible audit trails in AWS, does Postman specifically captures any data (request, response, header etc) when collections/HTTP requests are being made through Postman (signed in) ?

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Could you please take the scenario for the projects don’t have internet connectivity and they can’t create account and switch to workspace how it’s possible