How to Disable Azure Application Insights in ASP.NET Core

In my previous post I showed you how easy it was to get started with an Introduction to Application Insights for your ASP.NET Core application. However what if you you don’t want Application Insights? You might notice in your Output pane when running your app that it’s still partially enabled for you out of the box. I’ll walk you through what I mean by it being partially enabled and then how you can go about hiding it until such time you decide to fully turn it on. Let’s get started.

Start off by creating a new ASP.NET Core application (see below) and then immediately run it.

You will then notice that you will see the following statements in your Output pane:

Application Insights Telemetry (unconfigured): {“name”:”Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Dev.Message”,”time”:”2018-03-24T03:39:26.5327026Z”,”tags”:{“ai.application.ver”:”1.0.0.0″,”ai.operation.parentId”:”|80d77757-4707b4b80d71a9b3.”,”ai.internal.sdkVersion”:”aspnet5c:2.1.1″,”ai.operation.id”:”80d77757-4707b4b80d71a9b3″,”ai.internal.nodeName”:”LT2206″,”ai.location.ip”:”127.0.0.1″,”ai.cloud.roleInstance”:”LT2206″,”ai.operation.name”:”GET Values/Get”,”ai.user.id”:”6RWa2″},”data”:{“baseType”:”MessageData”,”baseData”:{“ver”:2,”message”:”Executed action WebApplication5.Controllers.ValuesController.Get (WebApplication5) in 205.1085ms”,”severityLevel”:”Information”,”properties”:{“DeveloperMode”:”true”,”{OriginalFormat}”:”Executed action {ActionName} in {ElapsedMilliseconds}ms”,”ActionName”:”WebApplication5.Controllers.ValuesController.Get (WebApplication5)”,”AspNetCoreEnvironment”:”Development”,”ElapsedMilliseconds”:”205.1085″,”CategoryName”:”Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Internal.ControllerActionInvoker”}}}}

You might be wondering why is it doing this and how can I disable it?

The easiest way to disable Application Insights without going through the process of ripping it out is to just disable it. You can do this by accessing TelemetryConfiguration.Active.DisableTelemetry and setting this to true. What I would recommend doing is to add a static method to your Startup.cs file and call this method from your Configure method like so:

Now when you run your application and look in the Output pane you will no longer see any statement pertaining to Application Insights.

I see a great deal of value of keeping Application Insights and using it in all your applications, so if you need to disable it then maybe do this when running in debug mode by using a conditional attribute on the method.

Enjoy!

References

https://github.com/aspnet/Home/issues/2051