Disable marketplace lookups

Hello, it seems there is no way to disable it but you can set up a custom plugin repository in your local network and configure IntelliJ IDEA to use it for installing and updating plugins. Please see https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/working-offline.html .

Hello Egor Klepikov

Since your last answer on this thread, has it been possible to disable plugin lookup and requests to the public marketplace?
I have IntelliJ set up in an isolated environment and I have a custom repository which works, but IntelliJ still keeps trying to access plugins.jetbrains.com.
I want to disable all those lookups and any other lookups IntelliJ might be doing to the internet. 

Thanks

Amer Tayeh Doesn't it work in the case of replacing the plugins repository host? https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/managing-plugins.html#replace-plugin-repo

I tried setting idea.plugins.host to nothing

idea.plugins.host=

while keeping the custom XML repository (idea.plugin.hosts)

idea.plugin.hosts=http://........./updatePlugins.xml

and that seems to have done the trick. I only see 'malformed URL' errors in the log rather than full plugins.jetbrains.com URLs

Is there a plan to implement a switch/flag to disable all communication to JB servers? including plugins and update checks?

There are no such plans. IDE communicates to license servers, plugins repo, shared indexes, docker containers/docker repos, etc. Maven/Gradle downloads dependencies and third-party plugins often communicate to their servers (task tracking for example). 

So, implementing that on the IDE side could be misleading, as users may expect full network isolation, which is almost impossible to achieve from the IDE. 

If isolation matters for you, a software firewall will be a better solution. You can check little snitch for macOS, or NetLimiter/Comodo for Windows. 

Hello Konstantin Annikov

Replacing the default plugin repo with nothing using the config entry below seems to have affected the plugin window on IntelliJ. It no longer shows the preview of the plugins coming from the custom XML repository. Whenever I select any plugin, the right pane doesn't change and keeps showing "select plugin to preview details". I tried this on versions 2021.3.1 and 2021.3.2, and both have the same behaviour.

idea.plugins.host=

It is expected behavior. You've replaced the default plugins repository, so the IDE cannot obtain any info about plugins from nowhere. 

> It no longer shows the preview of the plugins coming from the custom XML repository.

You can define the URL of custom plugins repo instead of the emty string. There are two ways to add custom plugins repository: instead and within the standard repo. See https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/managing-plugins.html#replace-plugin-repo

Let's take a step back.

The IDE is already behind proxy and it cannot successfully contact JetBrains marketplace anyway.
Without setting the default plugins repository to an empty string, the IDE was able to load the plugin details from updatePlugins.xml (specified in idea.plugin.hosts)- so the details come from the XML anyway, never from the public repo.

After setting the default plugins repo to an empty string to disable attempts to contact the public repo, the IDE is no longer able show the plugin details that come from the internally hosted XML file.

Why would setting the default repo to empty string (idea.plugins.host) impact its ability to read the plugin details from the internally hosted XML in idea.plugin.hosts (not to be confused with the former)? Especially that it was never able to contact the public marketplace anyway?

It looks to me that the IDE's failure to make a request to the marketplace is tripping its ability to display the details from the XML file, which should be independent of the former anyway. It can still list the plugins though on the left pane.

I dont have a plugins repo which supports the required endpoints. What I have is an updatePlugins.xml file..

Any idea, Konstantin Annikov?

Does it help to define 

idea.plugins.host=https://no.host

instead of empty string? Or set the same URL with updatePlugins.xml in both properties