Disable Unwanted Default Analytics in Astro Starlight

Tested on: Astro 5.7, Starlight 0.32 Problem: Two analytics scripts loading — one I didn't add, one I did.

Find what's loading

View source on production. I found:

• @vercel/analytics (I never installed it — came from a template)
• Starlight's optional analytics hook
• My Plausible script (the only one I wanted)

Remove Vercel analytics

Search codebase:

grep -r "vercel/analytics" .

Found in package.json and astro.config.mjs:

import vercel from '@astrojs/vercel/analytics';
// integrations: [vercel()]

Remove package and integration:

npm uninstall @vercel/analytics @astrojs/vercel

Starlight analytics config

astro.config.mjs before:

starlight({
  title: 'My Docs',
  // analytics default may inject if plugin present
})

Explicitly disable — no built-in analytics in Starlight core, but check head config:

starlight({
  title: 'My Docs',
  head: [
  // remove any third-party script entries you didn't add
  ]
})

Add Plausible (privacy-friendly)

src/components/Analytics.astro:

---
const domain = import.meta.env.PUBLIC_PLAUSIBLE_DOMAIN;
const isProd = import.meta.env.PROD;
---

{isProd && domain && (
  <script defer data-domain={domain} src="https://plausible.io/js/script.js"></script>
)}

Add to src/layouts/Layout.astro before </head>.

.env:

PUBLIC_PLAUSIBLE_DOMAIN=myblog.dev

Ghost script — @astrojs/sitemap confusion

Not analytics, but worth checking:

grep -r "script" astro.config.mjs

Sitemap integration doesn't inject JS. Good.

Verify clean build

npm run build
grep -r "googletagmanager\|vercel\|segment" dist/
# Should return nothing

CSP to block future accidents

public/_headers (Netlify) or adapter headers:

/*
  Content-Security-Policy: script-src 'self' https://plausible.io; connect-src 'self' https://plausible.io

New scripts fail loudly in console instead of silently tracking.

Result

Scripts before: 3 (vercel + starlight remnant + plausible)
Scripts after: 1 (plausible)
Page weight: -18 KB
GDPR banner: not needed with Plausible