Annoying Lens IDE Login

After updating to Lens IDE 5.5.2 a non skippable login screen is displayed. You need to signup for a Lens Spaces ID or login using a Google or GitHub account. Annoyed by this I wanted to know if there is a workaround. Luckily there is: Cooksauce on GitHub posted a workaround for MacOS

The same applies for Windows, the paths are slightly different:

1. Close Lens IDE
2. Delete the folder %LocalAppData%\Programs\Lens\resources\extensions\lenscloud-lens-extension
3. Remove the line pointing to the extension lenscloud-lens-extension from %AppData%\Lens\package.json
4. Start Lens IDE

Not sure how long this will work, since this wasn’t build in by mistake:

📣 New Release! One important change: We now require Lens Desktop users to have a Lens ID. This will not impact your current Lens Desktop functionality, however it establishes a foundation for Lens to enable teamwork, collaboration, and other exciting new features. (Thread)

— Lens – The Kubernetes Platform (@k8slens) May 25, 2022

Some users suggested to move to other builds of Lens, older versions or different products altogether:

• Lens 5.5.0 for Windows
• Lens 5.4.6 for Intel Mac
• Lens 5.4.6 for M1 Mac
• VMware Tanzu Octant
• KubeNav
• OpenLens (Fork without Telemetry and Login)
• k9s (CLI)

With Lens 5.4.6 You might need to add the following line to the hosts (C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts or /etc/hosts) file to circumvent the login:

127.0.0.1    app.k8slens.dev

I haven’t checked the alternatives, I used the folder delete method.