The new navigation: Coming to you in 2025

[Varsha Patel]

Hi @Fabricio Riveros

Your site was enrolled for the EAP from an administrator. This is the reason you're seeing the new navigation for your site. 

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Re: Is it possible that the release of the new interface version was brought forward?

We've only enabled the new navigation for a small cohort of people who have signed up for the EAP. The General Availability (GA) release of the new navigation is coming in 2025. We can confirm that this isn't brought forward. We'll announce GA release closer to the dates of the actual release in 2025. 

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Re: How does the Early Access Program (EAP) subscription work?

In October 2024, we announced EAP and asked admins to sign up via this form.

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Re: When I subscribe will I receive advance access to the new features?

Yes, you'll have the features available to you in your site after you've signed up and agreed to be a part of the EAP.

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Like @Tomislav Tobijas said, we've just announced the Beta launch. But we haven't enabled the new navigation for Beta sign ups yet.

[Jack Graves]

This looks great! Can't wait to try it out 🚀

[Aaron Geister _Trundl_]

Do we have an ETA when this will be turned on for site?

[Apryl Harris]

Just an FYI:

I took me a minute to find it in the new nav...

I was expecting it to be in the top nav. But Project settings is still in the left nav but you have to click the three dots next to the project's name to see it.

[Jack Graves]

This is awesome! Love the new interface ❤️

[Jehan Bhathena]

Hi @Varsha Patel 

The New Navigation is enabled by Default on a new site that I created a few days back. As per you post we can change back to the old one? Please can you share a link to the steps needed to change back to the old UI?

Also, are there plans of integrating a "Product Link" or Custom link (in my case Confluence) in the left navigation pane?

[Amir Tavakoli]

Hi there,

I wanted to share some feedback on the recent UI changes.

It’s too slow.

Explanation:

As a long-time Jira user (nearly 10 years), I frequently switch between sections like Timeline, Backlog, Active Sprint, Components, and similar items. In the previous design, these options were arranged vertically, with minimal spacing, making switching fast and seamless.

However, the new design uses a horizontal layout, which forces me to move across a much larger distance when switching between sections. This has noticeably slowed down my workflow and made navigation less efficient.

I understand that this change might have been intended to accommodate switching between projects or similar use cases. However, in practice, it has caused a significant decline in the user experience.

I hope this feedback helps improve the usability of the platform.

Best regards,

Amir Tavakoli

Product Manager

[chris sieverts]

Hi @Varsha Patel 

This looks helpful however when I search the product updates I do not find anything about this new navigation. Can you provide a link or let us know how to find this in the "Product updates"?

Thank you

chris

[Administrator]

This reminds me of what happened in 2018 when Atlassian changed the ‘top’ navigation bar to a ‘side’ navigation bar. The experience was so bad that *after* they rolled it out, they ran focus groups where 95% of users said they preferred the ‘top’ to the ‘side’. Then in 2020 the ‘top’ was brought back as an ‘improvement’ (“we have heard your feedback”) and because it was a “better navigation system”.

Fast forward to today, and the reasons for changing the ‘top’ back to the ‘side’ are the same as when the ‘side’ was changed back to the ‘top’ – “it will make it faster to navigate and easier to find work”.

*The same problems that users reported in 2018 are highlighted on this page as improvements.*

Saying that something is “new and modern” doesn’t beat something that has already proven to be “better”. What would have been better is to allow customisation on the ‘top’ rather than move some of the ‘top’ to the ‘side’ and end up with three navigation bars compared to two. Also, I can’t see where the project settings are so possibly there are now four navigation bars.

[Volodymyr Krupach]

I completely agree with the Administrator. With so many bugs to fix and essential business features to implement, Atlassian seems more focused on playing around with the UI.

Sure, the UI should be modern and easy to use, but Jira isn’t Facebook. These constant changes, made just for the sake of it, actually put off big clients who care more about clarity and usability than flashy updates.

[Rune Rasmussen]

Why isn't this in the "Product updates" list in the Admin Portal?

[Nicole Howard]

I saw the demo in Barcelona last year and I am really missing seeing the goals within JIRA! Will it be added?

[Adrian Vital]

This is not an improvement!   The user experience is far worse!   

If this was a good idea, ALL applications would have a side menu instead of top menu bar!   You are trying to be cute reinventing the wheel - it's not working out.    

The fact each user can customize the bar is not always great as it makes it harder to provide support when everyone's screen is different!     

The "Starred"  and "Recent" cannot be completely hidden and causes a LOT of clutter and noise.   Having the "Archive" option right there is awful because someone  can accidently click it.   

This is not good.   My organization absolutely hates it.   What a regression.

[Daniel Flynn]

The new layout it terrible, it feels old and antiquated. How do we switch it back to the top bar layout?

[Adrian Vital]

@ Atlassian,  

PLEASE LISTEN TO YOUR PAYING CUSTOMER BASE!   WE DO NOT LIKE THIS!

At the very least,  give us a way to opt-out of the awful regression! 
The navigation is not user friendly at all.  It introduces so much noise and makes finding things and navigating so much harder.   

[Apryl Harris]

@Varsha Patel  
If I submit to be in the early adoption program for the new nav in my org's Jira/Confluence PROD instances, how long will it take for it to be implemented? Can I ask for a specific date/time? 

[Bryan Kenny]

We are on the EA for the Jira new navigation but will we get notified as admins an exact date when our instance is being rolled onto it for Confluence etc in GA? The current timeline I can find anywhere online is just some point this month

Thanks

[Harrison Ponce]

Hi @Varsha Patel @Kristin Perchal  @Matt Kroeger  - the Look and Feel setting for the navigation to display the site title beside the system logo does not seem to be working. This is quite important for us as the products (especially in the new navigation) look more and more similar.

I thought this might've been just my site, but I've tested this on a handful of different sites with the new navigation enabled and the site title display does not work on any of them.

I see there is a bug ticket (JRACLOUD-85564) for this. Can someone please confirm if this will be fixed before the new navigation is rolled out?

This feature will hinder our adoption/change management of the new navigation.

[Dawn DeBolt]

We use Jira Service Management and Confluence. Trying to understand how we will be impacted by this change since we only use two products.  The webinar showed several products being used where it seemed like the consolidated navigation would be very helpful but since we only use 2 products I am trying to understand what we might gain from this?  

[ヴァリエンテ フロリアン_Florian Valiente_]

@Bryan Kennywe are on the same boat as you, but if you email them, they can turn it on for your confluence site as well.

[Sussi Åström]

Hi,

Have to say that within seconds of turning the new navigation on, I am disappointed. It's more confusing and cluttered. Please make an option for staying with the old navigation. 

[Mauricio Heberle]

This update has interesting aspects, but the whole top bar for only searching issues makes no sense. I think its good to change, but clearly it needs some correction.

[Don Arsenault]

This looks like another regression. We lose functionality to gain a slightly prettier UI. That's a poor trade off.

I'll need that side panel collapsed all the time. I need that horizontal space to actually work on issues. I have a standard size laptop. I won't buy and use a large monitor just to work in Jira! 

That means I'll have an extra step in order to get to Your Work, Projects, and Filters.

What do we get for that loss of functionality? An even bigger search box? We can't even type in the search box. It's just a button to pop up a search UI. It only needs to be a magnifying glass icon like most websites. Most of the header will be just wasted space!

Now, if...

• the entire header moved to the side panel, and
• the vertical space is used to show more of an issue and more issues, 

... then I'm in! That's a good trade off. 

I want more space to work with issues - either viewing more of one issue, or viewing more issues in a list or board.

[Rafa]

I just refreshed the page after enabling this new UI and already hate it .. things that were quickly available on the top bad now requires scrolling aaaaaall the way down on the sidebar.

If I have multiple projects expanded on the sidebar, reaching a dashboard is way at the bottom.

On top of all this bad UX, I need to see upselling features polluting the already full sidebar. Why does it show me Goals and Assets on the sidebar when they are not part of what I am paying for?

and everything is just gray on white, with no separations, scrolling through the sidebar to find a specific option is just a blur of nothingness..

I mean, come on!

PS: and the search, despite now having a bigger search field (wow, modern!) is just as bad. Searching for a value that I know is in a custom field of an issue, it does not appear on the suggestions (instead showing me an unrelated ticket that has the same number in the key); when I specify the project for the search, it shows no results. I have to click on "view all results" to then land on the full-page search results page with the actual ticket I want.

I'm so tired of wasting time on this platform. Hours and hours of wasted productivity because of some product managers and developers at atlassian are bored coming up with random changes, instead of fixing the _many_ things that are broken.

PPS: and the togle on the board view to keep "quick filters" always visible does not work. They disappear after refreshing the page, so next time you come to that project's board you need to enable the quick filters view again. So quick...

I am pretty sure that's something that got fixed just a few months ago in the old UI. Had to reinvent the wheel..

PPPS: even the colours of the statuses have changed... to worse. *sigh*..

Another update:

* the columns are not even aligned unless you have a very wide screen (which now is even more needed than before thanks to the sidebar)

* the calendar view wiggles all over the place when the spinning/loading icon appears. and for some reason it needs to "load" every time you switch from calendar to board to calendar again. All this heavy use of javascript and still need to wait for calendar to refresh..

[Casey Gould]

To build on @Dawn DeBolt's comment, it seems that for those of us using only a few Atlassian products, what we seem to be getting are ads. It's truly ridiculous to have to hide (or not be able to hide!) ads on screen after screen after screen.

For example, I can't seem to get rid of these ads on homepage, and "try" badging is not appropriate labeling for ads.

Please just build a good product and let our team do their work without (poorly labelled) ads trying to trick them into clicking on something and spamming our admin with product requests.