How to disable webpack dev server auto reload?

Question

I know most people have the opposite problem but I actually want to disable the auto reload functionality.

This is how I run my server:

webpack-dev-server --open --progress

This is my dev server config:

devServer: {
    contentBase: 'app',
    port: 9005,
    hot: false,
    inline: false
}

Versions:

"webpack": "1.14.0",
"webpack-dev-middleware": "1.9.0",
"webpack-dev-server": "^1.16.2",
"webpack-hot-middleware": "2.13.2",
"webpack-md5-hash": "0.0.5"

With this setup webpack dev server opens the initial page as localhost:9005/webpack-dev-server/ with auto reload on (iframe mode). When I set inline to true then it opens localhost:9005 and auto reload is still on (inline mode => websockets).

Is there a way to disable auto reload entirely?

Answer 1

Working solution for webpack 2.x and 3.x

config.devServer = {
    hot: false,
    inline: false,
}

Answer 2

The webpack client scripts are added by default to your bundle (since webpack 2), but you can disable those by adding --no-inline to your CLI command.

Answer 3

As a workaround I excluded webpack client side scripts from the bundle. This seems to stop auto reload from happening. I did that by redirecting those script to a null loader.

{test: /webpack-dev-server\\client/, loader: "null-loader"},

Answer 4

Here's an update for webpack-dev-server 3.x. Update your config/webpack/development.js like so:

process.env.NODE_ENV = process.env.NODE_ENV || 'development';

const environment = require('./environment');

environment.config.merge({
  devServer: {
    hot: false,
    inline: false,
    liveReload: false
  }
});

module.exports = environment.toWebpackConfig();

Answer 5

Didn't find an obvious solution either (webpack-dev-server version 1.16.5).

A partial solution seems to be:

webpack-dev-server --watch-poll 99999999999

This won't rebuild automatically. But it will still reload browser windows after the initial build.