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 at most once per day.

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

Step 1: Check the current configuration of APT News#

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

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 successful by running the following again:

pro config show apt_news

You should now see:

apt_news False

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

pro config set apt_news=true

And verify the setting worked with pro config show apt_news.