How to disable or re-enable APT News

APT News is a feature that allows for timely package-related news to be displayed during an apt upgrade. It is distinct from Ubuntu Pro ‘available update’ messages that are also displayed during an apt upgrade. APT News messages are fetched from https://motd.ubuntu.com/aptnews.json once per day (at most).

By default, APT News is turned on. In this guide, we show how to turn off and on the APT News feature for a particular machine.

Check current APT News configuration

pro config show apt_news

The default value is True, so if you haven’t yet modified this setting, you will see:

apt_news True

Disable APT News

pro config set apt_news=false

This should also clear any current APT News you may be seeing on your system during apt upgrade.

You can double-check that the setting was changed successfully by running pro config show apt_news again. This time, you should see:

apt_news False

Re-enable APT News (optional)

If you change your mind and want APT News to start appearing again during apt upgrade, run the following command:

pro config set apt_news=true

Once again, you can verify the setting worked with the pro config show apt_news command.