🔍 What if Atlassian released a new New Compact Density Feature and didn't tell anyone?

[#1]

@Kris Klima _K15t_ clued me into a new feature he found yesterday. He posted about it over on LinkedIn.

As he writes:

Turning on compact density visually shrinks the text just enough to make a huge difference, especially on smaller / laptop screens - and it's independent of the browser's zoom settings so it's easier to find the sweet spot. Life's small pleasure 😀

But I'm a kind of a stickler for release notes so I was really wondering where this was announced.

Surprisingly enough, I can't find mention of it in App updates or the Atlassian Cloud Documentation blog nor was it in either of the last two sets of emailed release notes. (And Bundled Releases are only supposed to come out the second Tuesday of every month, which was not this week.)

So it turns out that @Elle Ky did drop a hint at this new feature last week (originally posted Nov 24, but updated Jan 28) in Legacy Editor Deprecation: High-Level Feature Support Overview:

Feature	Support status	Associated ticket
Ability to adjust font size	Supported: A new “Compact Mode” that introduces a preset smaller font size and tighter line spacing to better support information dense content Evaluating: Further customization of font size	https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-46077

Huh. CONFCLOUD-46077 is "Ability to adjust font size" and has been open since, 2017! Well... that's almost double digits!

In that ticket @Adrien Siebert commented two days ago (Feb 3):

Confluence has quietly released a "density" selection feature in the cloud editor (above the title input), allowing to switch between "compact" and "standard" density:

This appears to switch between the 13px and 16px base text sizes, which is welcome!
Though I couldn't find any public documentation / changelog about it.

A picture is worth a thousands words:

(looks like attaching pictures is not allowed)
(side-by-side comparison of the two densities, with "standard" normal text at 16px is bigger than "compact" Heading 3 at 14.9px)

["quietly" is an understatement!]

Alas, JAC doesn't allow for attaching pictures, so here's a side-by-side screenshot I just took. My browser window has been sized to use most of the screen of a 2021 16" MacBook Pro running in default resolution, which is 1728x1117.

I suppose it's somewhat interesting that lists of Jira issues appear to use the same font size and table padding (and table padding in regular tables also appears to be identical). And I guess it's kind of nice that Compact Density gets rid of the annoying (IMHO) "Related Content" bit at the bottom:

Anyways, congrats on the new feature! MAYBE this will prevent screaming from users whose legacy pages would otherwise get MUCH LONGER because of the standard fonts.

Clearly that seems to be the goal based on this Suggestion (!?) that @Kris Klima _K15t_ also found: CONFCLOUD-83556 - Ability to choose compact size for pages which was opened Jan 22, 2026. (Looks like maybe @Kenny Taig 's site must have been part of an EAP or experiment to see it so early.)

I find it kind of wild that no more than two weeks ago Atlassian:

1. May not have included a toggle for to switch between Compact / Standard Density on all pages, and then added it!? OR MORE LIKELY
2. Hadn't communicated/documented internally that this new feature existed, and so Support ends up creating a suggestion about it

OH I KNOW! Maybe Rovo hadn't yet indexed the Bitbucket PR or Bamboo deployment comments that pushed this change to production, and that's why Support couldn't find it.

[Kris Klima _K15t_]

@Darryl Lee Big thanks for digging deeper and summarizing the findings. A benefit of the global community, we can work 24/7 and pass the shovel 'round the timezones :D 

Anyway...

Given how old some of the tickets are, this updated is both much needed and often requested.

Shame it wasn't communicated with a greater fanfare and was pretty much left to 'accidental discovery'.

But anyway, here it is!

[Darryl Lee]

I will note taking a closer look at my screenshots, that while the font size has gotten smaller, similar changes to margins and spacing between elements (paragraphs, panels, column dividers) are still EXACTLY the same, which makes me think they didn't have time to properly proportionally resize ALL the elements.

I guess writing some code to update a font size is probably pretty quick and easy.

[Dave Mathijs]

Although I welcome this feature, I still have the feeling there's too much white space (white noise?) on Confluence content, especially Databases.

And I haven't even opened the Jira 'can (of worms)'...

[Barbara Szczesniak]

In case anyone else's eye glossed right over this control on the page, like mine did, here is where it is:

[Josh]

@Darryl Lee this is another great example of how the release notes / communication process could be tightened up at Atlassian.

It seems like teams may be given a bit too much flexibility around how / when to communicate changes like this. It might make sense within Atlassian to not be very prescriptive to maintain high velocity, but the velocity falls apart when it reaches customer atmosphere...

[River Brandon]

This seems to only exist on the new live pages, right? So I wonder if it came out with that release. I don't get these controls on traditional pages.

I also really hate how you have to hover to see those page controls.

[Barbara Szczesniak]

@River Brandon The image I included is from a traditional page. 

[Darryl Lee]

Thanks @Barbara Szczesniak yes, I totally missed including that very important screenshot. Here's a close-up view, with the hover-over tooltip:

And yes @River Brandon, I too hate that hidden controls that only show up when you hover in the right place.

I truly do not understand Atlassian's obsession with white space even when editing (this is not a Live Doc). This is dumb:

Like, I'm not reading Moby Dick. I don't need that white space.

[Adrien Siebert]

Thanks for digging up the release notes for this — or lack thereof — and other references!

I'm amused it was only listed in the Legacy Editor Deprecation: High-Level Feature Support Overview article. Hard to find and:

• It mentions «A new “Compact Mode”» when the editor shows "compact density". Terms matter –the only info I had found from searches was from a third-party, Jimi Wikman.
• It's listed with CONFCLOUD-46077 about custom font sizes, but that JIRA ticket was not updated.

Here's the side-by-side I had attempted to attach in the ticket, "speaking for itself" with headings:

[Darryl Lee]

OH DANG! @__ Jimi Wikman found it on January 20!?

• Introducing compact density for pages and live docs 

Jimi wrote:

Changed Rollout Schedule to Jan 20, 2026

Changed Status to Rollout Complete

Where did you find that Jimi??

[__ Jimi Wikman]

It popped up in my App updates in the Atlassian Admin :)

[Darryl Lee]

That's wild @__ Jimi Wikman because I checked yesterday and I swear that when I searched for the word 'density' nothing came up, but lo and behold it's there now:

Our Sandbox is on Preview, so I'm wondering what track (if any) you are on:

(And can you really call it a "schedule" if it shows up the day AFTER it rolled out?)

[Darryl Lee]

OMG, and thanks to a tip from @Susan Hauth _Toronto ACE Leader_ as well as a careful reading of the history of Legacy Editor Deprecation: High-Level Feature Support Overview (Championship has its privileges), I found that Atlassian introduced ANOTHER NEW FEATURE without any fanfare, much less documentation, much less updating of old tickets.

And once again, somehow, @__ Jimi Wikman found it way back on January 6:

• Adjust width dropdown for Confluence pages and live docs 

To be clear, "Adjust width" has been there for a while, here's what's new:

Confluence now uses an Adjust width dropdown for pages and live docs, with a new Max width option. Admins can set Max as the default for new pages, making it easier to show more content and match the legacy editor experience.

As mentioned in @Elle Ky's Jan 28 update to Legacy Editor Deprecation: High-Level Feature Support Overview:

Feature	Support status	Associated ticket
Increase maximum width of pages to better support content on wide screen monitors	Supported	https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-68780 https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-78511

No updates from Atlassian on either of those tickets:

• CONFCLOUD-68780 Making page full-width does not render page as full-width 
• CONFCLOUD-78511 Table width for large screen is fixed to 1800 px 

But ah, I do now see this in the Admin App updates on my Premium site:

But again, not mentioned in any of these blog posts, nor was it in the mailed Bundled Release Notes:

Atlassian Cloud changes Jan 26 to Feb 2, 2026

Atlassian Cloud changes Jan 19 to Jan 26, 2026

Atlassian Cloud changes Jan 12 to Jan 19, 2026

Atlassian Cloud changes Jan 5 to Jan 12, 2026

Atlassian Cloud changes Dec 29 to Jan 5, 2026

[Keith Furnell]

Also seems like legacy editor pages that get converted to the new editor now start off life using this compact layout (i.e. a much more modest visual jump). Still makes a mess of table/column widths though :-(