Disable application insights in debug

How can I disable application insights automatically when using a debug configuration and enable it only on release?
Is it possible to do this without creating another instrumentation key only for debug?

I have trackevent statements scattered all over the code, enclosing them inside a debug preprocessor check is not an ideal solution.

My current solution is to set the Build Action of the ApplicationInsights.config file to None so that it's not copied to the project's output directory, but this isn't a process that can be automated based on the active build configuration.

There is a Developer Mode but needs to be changed manually (if it was possible to conditionally set the config file, emptying the instrumentationkey solved problem as well). See http://apmtips.com/blog/2015/02/02/developer-mode/

Reference: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2015/01/07/application-insights-support-for-multiple-environments-stamps-and-app-versions.aspx

You can try to use TelemetryConfiguration.DisableTelemetry Property Something like this way..

#if DEBUG
            TelemetryConfiguration.Active.DisableTelemetry = true;
#endif

As an addition to the other solutions I would suggest to add the following let's say to the Global.asax:

protected void Application_Start()
{    
    DisableApplicationInsightsOnDebug();
    // do the other stuff
}

/// <summary>
/// Disables the application insights locally.
/// </summary>
[Conditional("DEBUG")]
private static void DisableApplicationInsightsOnDebug()
{
    TelemetryConfiguration.Active.DisableTelemetry = true;
}

The advantage of this is, that it needs no change to the configs and it works better with some tools like ReSharper which will understand it better than #-directives.

For ASP.NET Core projects the App Insights are ON by default, which actually logs a ton of info into debug window.

To disable it go to "TOOLS --> Options --> Projects and Solutions --> Web Projects" and check "Disable local Application Insights for Asp.Net Core web projects."

Below is the image for disabling local app insights.

For more info on the issue you can see the official github issue here

Running an ASP.NET Core 2.1 web application with Visual Studio 2017 (15.9.2) the "Disable local Application Insights for Asp.Net Core web projects" did not clear up the output in my Debug window.

However adding the following to Configure() in Startup.cs did the job;

if (_env.IsDevelopment())
{
    app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
    TelemetryConfiguration.Active.DisableTelemetry = true;
    TelemetryDebugWriter.IsTracingDisabled = true;
}

Note that the IsTracingDisabled was the key solution, but I left in DisableTelemetry for good measure! Plus having both lines next to one another is helpful when searching for similar references between .NET Framework & .NET Core projects in the same solution.

As explained in the question not deploying or deploying an ApplicationInsights.config without <instrumentationkey>key</instrumentationkey> block events from being generated. You can then put the instrumentation key in code (only on release in my case)

#if !DEBUG
    Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Extensibility.TelemetryConfiguration.Active.InstrumentationKey = "instrumentation key";
#endif

Every TelemetryClient created after this call will have the correct key and will track events so you don't have to change the code in all places. Not calling the method above or leaving the parameter empty will block events because there isn't a key configured.

Basically the ApplicationInsights.config file overrides any code that set the instrumentation key, removing the <instrumentationkey>key</instrumentationkey> inside it will let you use code to configure the key. If you remove the file completely it doesn't work.

Here is the confirm: "If you want to set the key dynamically - for example if you want to send results from your application to different resources - you can omit the key from the configuration file, and set it in code instead."

Reference: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-insights-configuration-with-applicationinsights-config/#_instrumentationkey