Force disable application autoupdate by blocking network call (in this case, gitkraken)

Question

Gitkraken autoupdates, and this cannot be turned off in the UI. This would not be a problem, were it not that I am using it on a managed device that does not trust Gitkraken's code signing. As a result of this, Gitkraken randomly stops working when restarted until I set aside time to sideload it again.

Is there a way that I can discover how Gitkraken is phoning home to look for updates, so I can block that from happening (e.g., blocking a host in my firewall)?

Working on macOS, if that helps.

Pillow

Last week, GitKraken 7.7.0 gets stuck loading loads of git repos - their pro support team told me to install 7.6.0 every time because there's no way to disable auto-update. That's ridiculous and terrible SE ethics. Forced updates of desktop software that aren't proprietary web-service clients should be illegal, imo. – Mincing

Edit your /etc/hosts file and add 127.0.0.1 api.gitkraken.com then if you want to update to latest version, just comment it. – Hudspeth

Answer 1

You can use fiddler to monitor your web traffic. I have not used it on macOS, but they offer a cross-os version https://www.telerik.com/download/fiddler-everywhere

From there you can run a network capture to see all of the network calls gitkraken is making. It looks like gitkraken is making 2 API calls, one to api.gitkraken.com and one to gloapi.gitkraken.com

If you wanted to block the updated call, blocking one of these two calls with a firewall rule (or through some other method) should accomplish your goal.

Pesach

Answer 2

For Windows. Actually the crack work only on gitkraken version 7.5.5. Install gitkraken 7.5.5 and crack it. After that, go to the directory " C:\Users\rakot\AppData\Local\gitkraken " and remove the file " update " cause whenever you open gitkraken it execute the update entry. Execute gitkraken with the file in " C:\Users\rakot\AppData\Local\gitkraken\app-7.5.5\gitkraken.exe " (you can create a shortcut of it) beacause all the shortcut created by default won't work.

Verbalize

Answer 3

With the newer versions it is sufficient to include two addresses in the hosts file:

127.0.0.1    release.gitkraken.com
127.0.0.1    release.axocdn.com

There will be asked whether there is a newer version than the one installed:

https://release.gitkraken.com/darwin/RELEASES?v=8.10.3&darwin=19.6.0

The answer is a link to the latest version and that's it for the currently running version.

In my case, I just installed version 8.10.3, which is sufficient for me, from a backup and edited the hosts file. This has been working fine for a long time on my ancient Mac.

Everything else doesn't have to be "bent".

Pleura