---
title: How do I disable tracing?
weight: 50
---

If you already have installed Istio with tracing enabled, you can disable it as follows:

{{< text plain >}}
# Fill <istio namespace> with the namespace of your istio mesh.Ex: istio-system
TRACING_POD=`kubectl get po -n <istio namespace> | grep istio-tracing | awk '{print $1}'`
$ kubectl delete pod $TRACING_POD -n <istio namespace>
$ kubectl delete services tracing zipkin   -n <istio namespace>
# Now, manually remove instances of trace_zipkin_url from the file and save it.
{{< /text >}}

Then follow the steps of the [cleanup section of the Distributed Tracing task](/docs/tasks/observability/distributed-tracing/zipkin/#cleanup).

If you don’t want tracing functionality at all, then [disable tracing](/docs/tasks/observability/distributed-tracing/zipkin/#before-you-begin) when installing Istio.