Disable or Hide Knime Update Banner & Community Hub.

[exploredata547]

Hi Team,

Is there any way to disable access to following features in Knime AP before we distribute internally

• Knime Community Hub
• Knime Update Banner

and also, Please confirm.. we are hosting Internal Knime Business Hub.. Does user’s will connect to Hub via “Knime Community Hub” ?

[exploredata547]

I tried -checkForUpdates flag as mentioned in the following document to disable checkForupdates like, It doesn’t work either. not sure, what this flag does then…

-checkForUpdates
false
-vmargs

User Guide | KNIME Documentation

[exploredata547]

One more solution, I tried is.. creating plugin_customization.ini file in the same folder as knime.ini

and added following contents to that plugin file. still it doesn’t work..

# Disable automatic update checks
org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui.sdk.scheduler/enabled=false
org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui.sdk.scheduler/schedule=never

# Suppress update popup UI
org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui.sdk.scheduler/showUpdateWizard=false

[rfeigel]

Out of curiousity, how do you think KAP would recognize your additional ini file?
Here’s what Gemini suggests. No guarantees from me

To disable automatic updates:

ini

org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui.sdk.scheduler/enabled=false
org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui.sdk.scheduler/schedule=never
org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui.sdk.scheduler/showUpdateWizard=false

[hotzm]

Hi @exploredata547,

the banner cannot be disabled directly.
However, I think what you really want if you distribute your AP installation internally via some mechanism, is to fix AP/extensions to a specific version.

You can use centrally managed customization on KNIME Hub for that purpose: Business Hub Admin Guide | KNIME Documentation

For your example, to remain on a specific version it should look like this in a .epf (“eclipse preference”) file (specifically explained here):

# The URLs of the Update Site as a comma separated list. Has to be a valid URI. Also serves as the identifier of the update site.
/instance/com.knime.customizations/updateSite.uris=https://update.knime.com/analytics-platform/5.5/latest

# The names of the Update Sites, as a comma separated list, that are shown in the
# "Available Software Sites" preference page. The number of names have to match the number of provided URIs.
/instance/com.knime.customizations/updateSite.names=KNIME Analytics Platform 5.5

# Disables all default update sites registered in the product
/instance/com.knime.customizations/updateSite.default.forceDisable=true

To remove the KNIME Community Hub from the listing, you have to create a “customization” via a .yml (YAML) file. As per the first example here:

version: 'customization-v1.0'
mountpoint:
  filter:
    - rule: deny
      predicate:
        type: pattern
        patterns:
          - api.hub.knime.com
        isRegex: false

Then in your .epf file you reference it, providing the filename that you gave it instead of <filename>:

/instance/org.knime.core/knime.core.ap-customization-configuration=${profile:location}/<filename>.yml

To add your company Hub to the AP mountpoints, you need to know your configured “default mount id” (I think the… default in the Hub installation is “knime-business-hub”, but maybe companies personalize it) and replace it in the example below where I wrote <your-hub-default-id>.

/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/active=true
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/defaultMountID=LOCAL
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/factoryID=org.knime.workbench.explorer.workspace
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/mountID=LOCAL
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/mountpointNumber=0
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/<your-hub-default-id>/active=true
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/<your-hub-default-id>/authType=OAuth
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/<your-hub-default-id>/factoryID=com.knime.explorer.server.knime_hub
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/<your-hub-default-id>/isCommunityHub=false
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/<your-hub-default-id>/mountID=<your-hub-default-id>
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/<your-hub-default-id>/mountpointNumber=1
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/<your-hub-default-id>/serveraddress=https\://api.example.org
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/<your-hub-default-id>/username=

This also goes into your .epf. Then, as per the documentation here, you specify both as mountpoints to be loaded for new workspaces (also in your .epf):

/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/defaultMountpoint/defaultMountpoints=LOCAL,<your-hub-default-id>​

To make your distributed AP installations aware of your Hub and where to get the profiles, follow this: KNIME Business Hub User Guide | KNIME Documentation

Hope this helps In case you need additional support, our support team can assist you with the Hub/AP setup via our support portal/email.

[exploredata547]

@hotzm

specifically explained here

This works perfectly fine, as we expected. one more question, we are trying to distribute recent knime version 5.9..

In .epf we add following 4 lines..

Now, while installing extensions.. I got this.. is 5.9 update repository not available yet.. If so, how to handle this situation…

[hotzm]

Hm, likely because 5.9 is a Standard release and it’s not expected that we will have versions other than 5.9.0. So you just replace /latest with /5.9.0.

[exploredata547]

All the changes, that you suggested working fine. thank you !!

But, these setting are saved inside workspace metadata folder. Because of this, when I distribute this to other users.. All these preferences are not being applied to new users that we onboard..

For this to solve, I tried creating preferences.epf file in the same location as knime.ini folder. and then in the knime.ini file.. I added following line before -vmargs.

-preferences
preferences.epf

But, these settings are not being applied..

Note

• I am using Zip distribution of Knime
• and we haven’t onboarded to Knime Business Hub yet.. so, using profiles won’t be a option..

Is there any way to apply default preferences ? or enforce preferences everytime when user opens knime through knime.ini like preferences flag ?

Thanks for your help !!!

[hotzm]

If the canonical way of distributing profiles via Business Hub does not work yet, you have to put them into a local folder and reference them similar to the Hub location explained here in the knime.ini above the -vmargs part.

The format has to be like this including newlines:

-profileLocation
<PATH>
-profileList
<profile_ID>

The profile location must point to the parent of the folder in which the .epf file resides.

The folder name will be the profile_id, so I recommend to put the .epf file(s) in some meaningfully named folder.

On macOS I could achieve it like this. I opened the macOS application bundle like one usually does when changing the knime.ini.

Inside the Eclipse folder I created the necessary folder/file structure: customProfiles/myprofile/custom.epf, where the name customProfiles is just to be neat (I think technically the whole Eclipse folder could work, too), myprofile and custom are just for demonstration. I think it is possible to have multiple .epf files in the folder and they get merged – so you could separate them by concerns like update sites, mountpoints, etc.

Then in the knime.ini I put the profile information before the -vmargs line:

-vm
../Eclipse/plugins/org.knime.binary.jre.macosx.aarch64_21.0.9.20251107/jre/Contents/Home/lib/libjli.dylib
-profileLocation
../Eclipse/customProfiles
-profileList
myprofile
-vmargs

The paths there are relative to where the knime /knime.exe executable is located, which is different on macOS.

I unzipped the Windows ZIP file and it looks like this:

So the changes compare to macOS would be

• put the customProfiles folder next to knime.exe
• in the knime.ini, the profileLocation path is ./customProfiles instead of ../Eclipse/customProfiles, since the customProfiles folder will be in the same folder as the executable

You can debug if it worked by starting KNIME and looking in your chosen workspace folder. There is a combined file which will contain all your customizations:

<knime-workspace>/.metadata/.plugins/org.knime.product/combined-preferences.epf

And I can indeed see my customizations there as expected:

Let me know if I missed anything

[exploredata547]

It still doesn’t work… except heap size status bar. Following are the steps, I followed.

• created profiles folder in the same folder as knime.ini..
• Inside profiles folder, created myProfile folder.
• Inside myProfile folder, created preferences.epf file

In the preferences.epf file. I added following lines.

/instance/com.knime.customizations/updateSite.uris=https://update.knime.com/analytics-platform/5.5
/instance/com.knime.customizations/updateSite.names=KNIME Analytics Platform 5.5
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/active=true
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/defaultMountID=LOCAL
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/factoryID=org.knime.workbench.explorer.workspace
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/mountID=LOCAL
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/mountpointNumber=0
/instance/org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/defaultMountpoint/defaultMountpoints=LOCAL
/instance/com.knime.customizations/updateSite.default.forceDisable=true
/instance/com.knime.customizations/updateSite.default.disable=true
/instance/org.eclipse.ui/SHOW_MEMORY_MONITOR=true
/instance/org.eclipse.ui/showIntro=false

In the knime.ini file, I added following lines before -vmargs

-profileLocation
../Eclipse/profiles
-profileList
myProfile

And then opened Knime , pointed to new workspace folder.. ( Just to ignore any cache )

• Except heap status bar.. none of the other settings hasn’t worked.

Like you said for debugging, I checked .metadata/plugins/org.knime.product for combined_preferences.epf, All the custom setting are succesfully loaded from our profile.. But, results are not as expected.. still Knime community Hub mount point is showing and It is asking me to upgrade to Knime 5.8.. banner is still showing…

It worked partially i.e, only for heap status bar.. not sure, why it is not recognising other configurations.

#
#Tue Jan 27 19:34:36 IST 2026
org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/active=true
com.knime.customizations/updateSite.names=KNIME Analytics Platform 5.5
org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/defaultMountID=LOCAL
org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/mountpointNumber=0
org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/factoryID=org.knime.workbench.explorer.workspace
org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/mountpointNode/LOCAL/mountID=LOCAL
org.knime.workbench.explorer.view/defaultMountpoint/defaultMountpoints=LOCAL
com.knime.customizations/updateSite.default.forceDisable=true
org.eclipse.ui/SHOW_MEMORY_MONITOR=true
com.knime.customizations/updateSite.uris=https\://update.knime.com/analytics-platform/5.5
com.knime.customizations/updateSite.default.disable=true
org.eclipse.ui/showIntro=false

[hotzm]

I think we are almost there.

Seeing your values in the combined-preferences.epf is encouraging.
One thing I found out is that the /instance/ prefix can be omitted, it is stripped before combining anyway (though it does not hurt).

The update banner appears, since you still point to the /5.5 “base” update site, which will make AP see that a new feature release (in this case 5.8) is available. To disable it, the update site must be pointing to a subfolder further down:

• https://update.knime.com/analytics-platform/5.5/latest if you want your users to update to bugfixes in the same feature release, e.g. from 5.5.2 to 5.5.3 or 5.5.4, etc.
• https://update.knime.com/analytics-platform/5.5/5.5.3 if you want your users to stay exactly on 5.5.3

The second way is suitable if you want to distribute updated bugfix versions yourself; with the first version users will get notified about bugfix updates.

As for the mountpoints, the Community Hub is more hardcoded than it may appear based on the epf contents. You need the customization yaml to remove it.

Add this to your preferences.epf:

org.knime.core/knime.core.ap-customization-configuration=${profile:location}/customization.yml

Then in customization.yml what I wrote before:

version: 'customization-v1.0'
mountpoint:
  filter:
    - rule: deny
      predicate:
        type: pattern
        patterns:
          - api.hub.knime.com
        isRegex: false

I tested it both with ClassicUI and ModernUI and it works in both:

knime-dev- is my custom Hub I added based on my description above.

Let me know if it works (or not ).

[exploredata547]

Thanks a lot for your patience… and it worked finally !!