How to Disable the Ubuntu ‘Whoopsie’ (Crash Report Submission) Daemon

What is the Whoopsie Daemon?

In Ubuntu Linux, error reporting is handled by two distinct programs. Apport catches the crash when an application fails, and Whoopsie is the background daemon responsible for actually submitting that crash report over the internet to Canonical’s error tracker database.

While this data helps developers fix bugs, Whoopsie runs continuously in the background, consuming a small amount of memory. For users who value strict privacy, operate air-gapped servers, or simply want to squeeze every megabyte of RAM out of their machine, this telemetry daemon is unnecessary and can be safely disabled.

How to Permanently Disable Whoopsie in Ubuntu

You can stop the Whoopsie daemon from running by modifying its default configuration file.

1. Open your Ubuntu Terminal (shortcut: Ctrl + Alt + T).
2. Open the Whoopsie configuration file using a text editor (like nano) with root privileges by running:

sudo nano /etc/default/whoopsie

3. Type in your administrator password when prompted.
4. Inside the file, you will likely see a single line that reads:

[General]
report_crashes=true

5. Change the word true to false, so the line looks exactly like this:

report_crashes=false

6. Save the file by pressing Ctrl + O, then press Enter.
7. Exit the nano editor by pressing Ctrl + X.

Stop the Active Service

Editing the file stops Whoopsie from launching on your next reboot, but it is still currently running in your active session. To kill the process immediately, run the following command:

sudo systemctl stop whoopsie.service

With Whoopsie disabled, your system will no longer attempt to phone home to Canonical when an application crashes, ensuring your crash logs remain entirely local and private.