How to disable Apport internal error reporting on Ubuntu

Last updated on July 2, 2020 by Dan Nanni

Question: On Ubuntu desktop, I often encounter a popup window, alerting that Ubuntu has experienced an internal error, and asking me to send an error report. This is bothering me as it keeps popping up for every application crash. How can I turn off the error reporting feature?

Ubuntu desktop comes with Apport pre-installed, which is a system that catches applications crashes, unhandled exceptions or any non-crash application bugs, and automatically generates a crash report for debugging purposes. When an application crash or bug is detected, Apport alerts user of the event by showing a popup window and asking the user to submit a crash report. You will see messages like the following.

"Sorry, the application XXXX has closed unexpectedly."
"Sorry, Ubuntu XX.XX has experienced an internal error."
"System program problem detected."

If application crashes are recurring, frequent error reporting alerts can be disturbing. Or you may be worried that Apport can collect and upload any sensitive information of your Ubuntu system. Whatever the reason is, you may want to disable Apport's error reporting feature.

Disable Apport Error Reporting Temporarily

If you want to disable Apport temporarily, use this command:

For Ubuntu 14.10 and Earlier:

$ sudo service apport stop

For Ubuntu 15.04 or Later:

$ sudo systemctl stop apport

Note that Apport will be enabled back after you boot your Ubuntu system.

Disable Apport Error Reporting Permanently

To turn off Apport permanently, edit /etc/default/apport with a text editor, and change the content to the following.

enabled=0

Now if you reboot your Ubuntu system, Apport will automatically be disabled.

If you think you will never use Apport, another method is to simply remove it altogether.

$ sudo apt-get purge apport

Support Xmodulo

This website is made possible by minimal ads and your gracious donation via PayPal or credit card

Please note that this article is published by Xmodulo.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you would like to use the whole or any part of this article, you need to cite this web page at Xmodulo.com as the original source.