7 ms·

Insomnium – Local, privacy-focused fork of Insomnia API client

204 points by archibaldJ 3y ago

whiskeytuesday 3y ago
I guess I haven't updated insomnia in a while or something as I was blissfully unaware that I needed a replacement until just now. Looks good!
patrikcsak 3y ago
insomnia was my favorite http client until it started deleting entire projects: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5167 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5167
- seanw444 3y ago
  For Emacs users, I recommend: https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el
postalrat 3y ago
My feature request: a way to generate curl commands, fetch, etc. Browsers can do it, why not a dedicated client for making http calls?
- whiskeytuesday 3y ago
  Insomnia already does this, at least did as of version 2022.6.0. Right click on the name of the request in the sidebar to find "copy as curl" and "generate code", Ctrl+Shift+G also brings up the Generate Code interface. I'll check if the more up to date version that insomnium is based on has the same feature once I get it built.
  - whiskeytuesday 3y ago
    Finally got a build, at least on my machine the features are still there except you can't right click on the list items any more, you have to click the little ▼ next to the item.
  - blacksmith_tb 3y ago
    When I went looking for alternatives to Insomnia I was pleasantly surprised to see that RecipeUI[1] will let paste in curl commands with various flags etc. and parse those to generate new entries, pretty slick. 1: https://github.com/RecipeUI/RecipeUI https://github.com/RecipeUI/RecipeUI
    - Volbohel 3y ago
      Hi, one of the makers of RecipeUI. Happy to hear this is something you liked! We're still finding edge cases when it comes to parsing cURL commands, so if you find any that we missed please file an issue or send us a message (here or discord). Also glad to hear any other feedback you have :)
  - postalrat 3y ago
    Thanks. I looked for that feature before in insomnia and didn't find it.
- archibaldJ 3y ago
  Ooh thanks for the pointer by @whiskeytuesday; just searched it up and found it in "packages/insomnia/src/common/hotkeys.ts". So in version 2023.5.8 (and Insomnium), it is Ctrl+Shift+G on Window/Linux and Cmd+Shift+G on Mac. And it will open a window showing the curl code. I will definitely re-add this to the UI in Insomnium v0.2 to make it more obvious (In v2023.5.8, this is supposed to show up after one opens "▼" and clicks "Generate Client Code" and then select "curl" but I think there is a bug and the full-list is not showing.)
  - archibaldJ 3y ago
    in insomnium v0.1.1, I've renamed it to "show CURL code, etc" and configured CURL to be the default (among all options I think this is what most people would use the most too). You would see it after opening the dropdown menu "▼" besides "Send".
makestuff 3y ago
Here is the main Github issue with a lot of context: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577 It was later turned into a discussion here: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/discussions/6590 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/discussions/6590 However, the discussion was closed so newer issues have been created.
- buzer 3y ago
  I saw they mentioned Git Sync as alternative. Do they do something to prevent that from working locally? Git itself does not need any remotes to be configured or you could set the remote to be another local git repository.
  - buzer 3y ago
    Replying to myself after looking at old discussion: It looks like the git mode is only available after logging in.
- kongkucs 3y ago
  [flagged]
Keyframe 3y ago
Thanks!
user3939382 3y ago
Marco should get a job with Unity or Bud Light. I highly recommend the HTTP client in the JetBrains IDEs. It’s come a long way fast, is under very active development, and a breath of fresh air. Even though it’s a feature it beats the standalone products IMHO.
- Justsignedup 3y ago
  didn't even know that existed. Thanks, I'll check it out!!!
  - hinkley 3y ago
    There’s a database client lurking in there too. I nearly always forget it.
laurensr 3y ago
What is it with generic HTTP clients and their data/account hunger? And why has no fully selfhosted team collaboration tool stood up?
- syspec 3y ago
  Id say marketing. What this episode has shown me, is that there are actually loads such clients. Many of them look kind of similar (in a good way), and provide much of the same functionality.
- hyperhopper 3y ago
  Data/account hunger is how you get money.
- diarrhea 3y ago
  I’m also a bit baffled. What’s so hard about curl with a UI? Why are there multiple entire companies in this space? I mean, competition is great and all, but these two at least look in a race to the bottom.
  - arvigeus 3y ago
    At my company I started building an app to do api calls to our own api. It’s basically specialised version of Insomnia/Postman, because BOTH of them managed to screw my configuration. And you are right: it’s nothing insanely hard. Granted - a more general purpose version would be a bit more tricky due to the need of handling special cases, but it is nothing too difficult.
- makestuff 3y ago
  Because they raised millions of dollars and it turns out most companies aren’t paying for enterprise licenses for what is essentially a UI wrapper on top of curl. There are open source projects (like insomnia) that are “good enough”. I think it is a symptom of all of the free money in the past few years where SAAS companies were just buying each others products. Now that the money is drying up, companies need to continue to hit these insane ARR targets somehow.
typosaur 3y ago
Do you have a plan to maintain it long-term or is it just a fork in sake of a fork? Other than that, for UI/manual testing I'd recommend Restfox or Bruno and ezy for gRPC. Hurl and Step CI for automated testing Restfox: https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox Bruno: https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno ezy: https://github.com/getezy/ezy https://github.com/getezy/ezy Step CI: https://github.com/stepci/stepci https://github.com/stepci/stepci Hurl: https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl Upd: added links
- imachine1980_ 3y ago
  for vscode i use thunder client, it works and is there any better option for vscode.
  - ushakov 3y ago
    thunder isn't open-source though? you should try REST Client: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re...
- lkjfdsafdsaf 3y ago
  [flagged]
- graphememes 3y ago
  https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/ is another one
  - ushakov 3y ago
    It’s VC-funded…
    - SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
      I think their model is acceptable and sustainable. It's MIT licensed, and they make money on the self-hosted enterprise edition that gives you SSO, permissions, audits, etc. Recently switched to it after going through most of the alternatives, because it has a clean UX, works on every OS without install, and has all of the features I need.
dang 3y ago
Recent and related: Insomnia REST client now requires an account - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37680126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37680126 - Sept 2023 (123 comments)
- hju22_-3 3y ago
  I found the reply from (someone from(?)) the company very amusing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37697367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37697367
  - user6275726E 3y ago
    [dead]
captn3m0 3y ago
Please provide ASAR buildS.
- archibaldJ 3y ago
  Right now there is ASAR inside the MacOS build: "/Applications/Insomnium.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar" (Windows & Ubuntu builds are on the way) By default it uses esbuild-runner and not electron-forge so I'm not sure how straightward creating a standalone asar build would be. Would appreciate any pull-request though!
12345hn6789 3y ago
Thanks for this. Luckily I found out insomnia was (fully) enshittified through hacker news and not the forced update. I'll backup my files and move over to this fork soon.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- archibaldJ 3y ago
  Cool! The import/export should work with the new fork too! Let me know if you run into any problem!
user6275726E 3y ago
Hey everyone.. wish we were here discussing something more positive. however... I happen to know that the Kong CTO is extremely obsessed with GitHub stars and vanity metrics so he can impress investors (e.g. check out his twitter to see him bragging about star counts). The best thing you can do to get Kong's attention on how horribly they have handled this situation is... unstar https://github.com/kong/insomnia https://github.com/kong/insomnia ...and tell everyone you know to do the same... It's so so sad that it's come to this but if you haven't seen any of the CTO's responses to users... you're in for a ride. See the thread that dang posted here. The CTO's own words make it quite clear that he sees the Insomnia community as pests getting in the way of his IPO. It should be crystal clear to everyone paying attention that the leadership at Kong doesn't have a whole lot of respect for their user's private data. I was hoping they'd take a moment to reflect after the extreme backlash but instead they've just been arguing with users nonstop while some of us are sitting here filling out compliance reports on the accidentally exfiltrated data.
- user6275726E 3y ago
  perhaps more heartbreaking is a tweet from the original creator of Insomnia[1] (who sold it to Kong some years ago) which reminds me of the time a year ago when Insomnia forced the GitHub stars count to be prominently placed in the product, but explicitly without any way to disable it[2]. It was later disabled but just for paying users.. You can see the CTO arguing with people in that thread about it. 1: https://twitter.com/GregorySchier/status/1707472402454835593 https://twitter.com/GregorySchier/status/1707472402454835593 2: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5056#issuecomment-1212372179 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5056#issuecomment-12...
  - 22c 3y ago
    I wanted to thank you for pointing out that gschier sold Insomnia a while ago. My interactions with gschier on some issues/pull requests many years ago were really positive and it's only now clicked why the direction the project has taken in the past couple of years has been such a departure from those early experiences.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
greatgib 3y ago
I'm grateful for the original creator of Insomnia to have provided a tool that was quite nice and still light. But what they did it's really bad in the sense of screwing users that trusted you once you get enough of them. In addition, the fork is probably good, because for some months I was thinking that there are a few simple improvements that could be done to reap great benefits. And it should now be easier to do that. Also I'm quite sure that the current version was crippled in term of usability to support getting a paid license.
markcollin 3y ago
forks are hard, but I wish you the best.
jonrosner 3y ago
Shameless plug: This is why I created Yaade. A self-hosted alternative to Postman and Insomnia. Unfortunately, being OSS is not enough anymore. The rug-pulls will keep happening. Remember: If you don't host it, you don't own it! Check out Yaade on GitHub. Will be interested to hear what you guys think.
jayFellows 3y ago
Added to a GitHub list of Insomnia alternatives: https://github.com/stars/jaymakes11/lists/insomnia-alternatives https://github.com/stars/jaymakes11/lists/insomnia-alternati...
Sleaker 3y ago
Huge thanks! I have been using Insomnia for quite a long time because postman never made sense to me with all the online data sync. I just want to keep everything myself, so really appreciate the insomnium fork here.

204 points by archibaldJ 3y ago

I guess I haven't updated insomnia in a while or something as I was blissfully unaware that I needed a replacement until just now. Looks good!

patrikcsak 3y ago

insomnia was my favorite http client until it started deleting entire projects: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5167 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5167

seanw444 3y ago
For Emacs users, I recommend: https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el

postalrat 3y ago

My feature request: a way to generate curl commands, fetch, etc. Browsers can do it, why not a dedicated client for making http calls?

whiskeytuesday 3y ago
Insomnia already does this, at least did as of version 2022.6.0. Right click on the name of the request in the sidebar to find "copy as curl" and "generate code", Ctrl+Shift+G also brings up the Generate Code interface. I'll check if the more up to date version that insomnium is based on has the same feature once I get it built.
- whiskeytuesday 3y ago
  Finally got a build, at least on my machine the features are still there except you can't right click on the list items any more, you have to click the little ▼ next to the item.
- blacksmith_tb 3y ago
  When I went looking for alternatives to Insomnia I was pleasantly surprised to see that RecipeUI[1] will let paste in curl commands with various flags etc. and parse those to generate new entries, pretty slick. 1: https://github.com/RecipeUI/RecipeUI https://github.com/RecipeUI/RecipeUI
  - Volbohel 3y ago
    Hi, one of the makers of RecipeUI. Happy to hear this is something you liked! We're still finding edge cases when it comes to parsing cURL commands, so if you find any that we missed please file an issue or send us a message (here or discord). Also glad to hear any other feedback you have :)
- postalrat 3y ago
  Thanks. I looked for that feature before in insomnia and didn't find it.
archibaldJ 3y ago
Ooh thanks for the pointer by @whiskeytuesday; just searched it up and found it in "packages/insomnia/src/common/hotkeys.ts". So in version 2023.5.8 (and Insomnium), it is Ctrl+Shift+G on Window/Linux and Cmd+Shift+G on Mac. And it will open a window showing the curl code. I will definitely re-add this to the UI in Insomnium v0.2 to make it more obvious (In v2023.5.8, this is supposed to show up after one opens "▼" and clicks "Generate Client Code" and then select "curl" but I think there is a bug and the full-list is not showing.)
- archibaldJ 3y ago
  in insomnium v0.1.1, I've renamed it to "show CURL code, etc" and configured CURL to be the default (among all options I think this is what most people would use the most too). You would see it after opening the dropdown menu "▼" besides "Send".

makestuff 3y ago

Here is the main Github issue with a lot of context: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577 It was later turned into a discussion here: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/discussions/6590 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/discussions/6590 However, the discussion was closed so newer issues have been created.

buzer 3y ago
I saw they mentioned Git Sync as alternative. Do they do something to prevent that from working locally? Git itself does not need any remotes to be configured or you could set the remote to be another local git repository.
- buzer 3y ago
  Replying to myself after looking at old discussion: It looks like the git mode is only available after logging in.
kongkucs 3y ago
[flagged]

Keyframe 3y ago

Thanks!

user3939382 3y ago

Marco should get a job with Unity or Bud Light. I highly recommend the HTTP client in the JetBrains IDEs. It’s come a long way fast, is under very active development, and a breath of fresh air. Even though it’s a feature it beats the standalone products IMHO.

Justsignedup 3y ago
didn't even know that existed. Thanks, I'll check it out!!!
- hinkley 3y ago
  There’s a database client lurking in there too. I nearly always forget it.

laurensr 3y ago

What is it with generic HTTP clients and their data/account hunger? And why has no fully selfhosted team collaboration tool stood up?

syspec 3y ago
Id say marketing. What this episode has shown me, is that there are actually loads such clients. Many of them look kind of similar (in a good way), and provide much of the same functionality.
hyperhopper 3y ago
Data/account hunger is how you get money.
diarrhea 3y ago
I’m also a bit baffled. What’s so hard about curl with a UI? Why are there multiple entire companies in this space? I mean, competition is great and all, but these two at least look in a race to the bottom.
- arvigeus 3y ago
  At my company I started building an app to do api calls to our own api. It’s basically specialised version of Insomnia/Postman, because BOTH of them managed to screw my configuration. And you are right: it’s nothing insanely hard. Granted - a more general purpose version would be a bit more tricky due to the need of handling special cases, but it is nothing too difficult.
makestuff 3y ago
Because they raised millions of dollars and it turns out most companies aren’t paying for enterprise licenses for what is essentially a UI wrapper on top of curl. There are open source projects (like insomnia) that are “good enough”. I think it is a symptom of all of the free money in the past few years where SAAS companies were just buying each others products. Now that the money is drying up, companies need to continue to hit these insane ARR targets somehow.

typosaur 3y ago

Do you have a plan to maintain it long-term or is it just a fork in sake of a fork? Other than that, for UI/manual testing I'd recommend Restfox or Bruno and ezy for gRPC. Hurl and Step CI for automated testing Restfox: https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox Bruno: https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno ezy: https://github.com/getezy/ezy https://github.com/getezy/ezy Step CI: https://github.com/stepci/stepci https://github.com/stepci/stepci Hurl: https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl Upd: added links

imachine1980_ 3y ago
for vscode i use thunder client, it works and is there any better option for vscode.
- ushakov 3y ago
  thunder isn't open-source though? you should try REST Client: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re...
lkjfdsafdsaf 3y ago
[flagged]
graphememes 3y ago
https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/ is another one
- ushakov 3y ago
  It’s VC-funded…
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
    I think their model is acceptable and sustainable. It's MIT licensed, and they make money on the self-hosted enterprise edition that gives you SSO, permissions, audits, etc. Recently switched to it after going through most of the alternatives, because it has a clean UX, works on every OS without install, and has all of the features I need.

dang 3y ago

Recent and related: Insomnia REST client now requires an account - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37680126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37680126 - Sept 2023 (123 comments)

hju22_-3 3y ago
I found the reply from (someone from(?)) the company very amusing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37697367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37697367
- user6275726E 3y ago
  [dead]

captn3m0 3y ago

Please provide ASAR buildS.

archibaldJ 3y ago
Right now there is ASAR inside the MacOS build: "/Applications/Insomnium.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar" (Windows & Ubuntu builds are on the way) By default it uses esbuild-runner and not electron-forge so I'm not sure how straightward creating a standalone asar build would be. Would appreciate any pull-request though!

12345hn6789 3y ago

Thanks for this. Luckily I found out insomnia was (fully) enshittified through hacker news and not the forced update. I'll backup my files and move over to this fork soon.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
archibaldJ 3y ago
Cool! The import/export should work with the new fork too! Let me know if you run into any problem!

user6275726E 3y ago

Hey everyone.. wish we were here discussing something more positive. however... I happen to know that the Kong CTO is extremely obsessed with GitHub stars and vanity metrics so he can impress investors (e.g. check out his twitter to see him bragging about star counts). The best thing you can do to get Kong's attention on how horribly they have handled this situation is... unstar https://github.com/kong/insomnia https://github.com/kong/insomnia ...and tell everyone you know to do the same... It's so so sad that it's come to this but if you haven't seen any of the CTO's responses to users... you're in for a ride. See the thread that dang posted here. The CTO's own words make it quite clear that he sees the Insomnia community as pests getting in the way of his IPO. It should be crystal clear to everyone paying attention that the leadership at Kong doesn't have a whole lot of respect for their user's private data. I was hoping they'd take a moment to reflect after the extreme backlash but instead they've just been arguing with users nonstop while some of us are sitting here filling out compliance reports on the accidentally exfiltrated data.

user6275726E 3y ago
perhaps more heartbreaking is a tweet from the original creator of Insomnia[1] (who sold it to Kong some years ago) which reminds me of the time a year ago when Insomnia forced the GitHub stars count to be prominently placed in the product, but explicitly without any way to disable it[2]. It was later disabled but just for paying users.. You can see the CTO arguing with people in that thread about it. 1: https://twitter.com/GregorySchier/status/1707472402454835593 https://twitter.com/GregorySchier/status/1707472402454835593 2: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5056#issuecomment-1212372179 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5056#issuecomment-12...
- 22c 3y ago
  I wanted to thank you for pointing out that gschier sold Insomnia a while ago. My interactions with gschier on some issues/pull requests many years ago were really positive and it's only now clicked why the direction the project has taken in the past couple of years has been such a departure from those early experiences.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

greatgib 3y ago

I'm grateful for the original creator of Insomnia to have provided a tool that was quite nice and still light. But what they did it's really bad in the sense of screwing users that trusted you once you get enough of them. In addition, the fork is probably good, because for some months I was thinking that there are a few simple improvements that could be done to reap great benefits. And it should now be easier to do that. Also I'm quite sure that the current version was crippled in term of usability to support getting a paid license.

markcollin 3y ago

forks are hard, but I wish you the best.

jonrosner 3y ago

Shameless plug: This is why I created Yaade. A self-hosted alternative to Postman and Insomnia. Unfortunately, being OSS is not enough anymore. The rug-pulls will keep happening. Remember: If you don't host it, you don't own it! Check out Yaade on GitHub. Will be interested to hear what you guys think.

jayFellows 3y ago

Added to a GitHub list of Insomnia alternatives: https://github.com/stars/jaymakes11/lists/insomnia-alternatives https://github.com/stars/jaymakes11/lists/insomnia-alternati...

Sleaker 3y ago

Huge thanks! I have been using Insomnia for quite a long time because postman never made sense to me with all the online data sync. I just want to keep everything myself, so really appreciate the insomnium fork here.