Postman removed offline mode (Scratch Pad) in new versions, Is there a way to enable it?

Question

Postman removed offline mode (Scratch Pad)

https://learning.postman.com/docs/getting-started/basics/using-scratch-pad/

The Scratch Pad is deprecated and no longer supported. The Scratch Pad is being discontinued and won’t receive any updates, bug fixes, or security updates. You can use the lightweight API Client when not signed in to Postman to send API requests, including HTTP, WebSocket, gRPC, and GraphQL requests. Learn more about the lightweight Postman API Client.

Today after I opened my offline Postman it automatically updated and alerted me to sign in and didn't allow me to use offline mode. The new lightweight mode does not have a lot of features.

Is there a way to enable it?

Answer 1

I've found rather simple way to bring back ScratchPad even on the latest versions (still works with 10.22):

1. Run Postman (considering it's in the "lightweight client" mode)
2. Open DevTools (Ctrl-Shift-I)
3. Type into the console pm.settings.setSetting("offlineAPIClientEnabled",0) - this will turn off the lightweight client and switch to ScratchPad
4. Restart Postman (you'll see briefly the ScratchPad interface but it will be hidden with a login screen then)
5. Open DevTools again
6. Type into the console pm.mediator.trigger("hideUserSwitchingExperienceModal")
7. You've done!

Now you can import back your collections etc. Also with any of luck in the folder %AppData%\Postman you can find backup-*.json files which are the backups of ScratchPad collections. You can import them too.

A drawback of this method is that you need to repeat steps 5-6 every time you start the app. Though since the console remembers its history that's not a big deal.

Another approach is to switch to ScratchPad mode the 10.17 version which is the last one without enforced de-ScratchPading. You'll just need to disable updates by removing/renaming file %LocalAppData%\Postman\update.exe.

There's another approach which can get rid of the login screen completely (involves a patching of the Postman app) but it's a bit more complex and you need to do it every time the app updates. If someone is interested I can describe it too.

NB. All this was tested only on Windows.