A full-height sidebar for better navigation

[#1]

Hi everyone,

The Atlassian navigation team has been working on improving sidebar interactions, one feature at a time. As part of this effort, we’re rolling out a full-height sidebar across Atlassian apps in December 2025 to improve discoverability and accessibility. This update extends the sidebar to span the full height of your Atlassian app, making navigation and interaction more seamless.

What’s changing?

The sidebar will now span the full height of your Atlassian app, making it easier to find and interact with the content.

Along with this, we’re introducing a few improvements to sidebar interactions:

• Double-click to collapse: When expanded, double-click the button to quickly collapse the sidebar.

• Global shortcut: Use Ctrl + [ to expand or collapse the sidebar at any time.

• Helpful tooltips: Tooltips will appear to guide you through these interaction.

The full-height sidebar addresses these pain points while also unifying the navigation experience across Atlassian apps. This update is a stepping stone toward future improvements in Atlassian navigation.

Why the change?

Earlier in 2025, we launched the new navigation to Jira, Confluence, Atlassian Home, and Focus.

From the feedback, especially from Confluence users, we learned that:

• The expand/collapse button was hard to find.

• The partial-height sidebar caused confusion and visibility issues when toggling.

The full-height sidebar addresses these pain points while also unifying the navigation experience across Atlassian apps. This update is a stepping stone toward future improvements in Atlassian navigation.

Who will this affect?

Starting December 2025, this update will roll out to all customers who haven’t customized the look and feel of their sites.

In November 2025, we’re opening up the opportunity to let you use this feature early and test it. If you’re interested, please sign up below with your sites.

➡️ Sign up

Note: Early access spots are limited, and we’re only accepting those participants who haven’t customized the look and feel of the sites.

Who is not affected?

For sites with customized look and feel, we’re taking a more careful approach. The full-height sidebar can disrupt intentional design choices, such as:

• Custom logos and titles

• Favicons

• Navigation colors

• Dark and light mode settings

Because of this, sites with customized look and feel won’t receive the update just yet. Rest assured, we’re actively exploring solutions to deliver the new sidebar while preserving your design choices. We’ll soon open research studies for these explorations, and you can sign up to express your interest.

Best,
The Atlassian navigation team

[高下 智彦_Tomohiko Takashita_ lixiluser]

使いにくいサイドバーになって久しいですが、2025年7月以前の使いやすかったサイドバーに戻してください

[Rune Rasmussen]

I'm sorry. What is this supposed to be fixing/improving again?
I've read the post a couple of times now and I can't figure it out.

Also: some feedback from our users:
When switching between Boards in Software Projects the boards change place in the left hand navigation.
Starred board stay on top (but there is no visual indicator that it is starred unless you click on the ... menu), but if you switch to a non-starred Board it'll pop up to the top of the list.
This behaviour of of Boards changing places like a weird game of musical chairs is a recurring complaint from existing users and one of the first things new users ask us to turn off.

There is no way to navigate to the /jira/boards/ page unless you're in a Space with enough boards that the "View all boards" button shows, but without that there is no "Boards" menu.

[Martin Flury]

groundbreaking feature
how did we ever work without this before?

[Andy Gladstone]

It took me a few glances at the before and after to understand that this update will extend the collapsible/expandable portion of the sidebar to the menu bar area. I am not sure how much more screen real estate we will regain with this change, or why it is necessary. I do hope that this is part of a larger strategy to provide more editing/viewing options in Confluence/Jira and not a stand alone 'improvement'. 

Playing with (changing) the nav has been a hotly debated topic over the past year, if this is part of a larger strategy it would be helpful to provide insight into that roadmap so that small incremental changes like this are communicated in the broader context.

[Don Arsenault]

Again and again. Changes that make Jira harder to use keep coming! Simple single key shortcuts changed to two key modifier shortcuts. Not even a consistent modifier.

• From [ key to Ctrl-[ keys to toggle sidebar.
• From Z key to Shift-Z keys to toggle full screen.

Why oh why?

[Barbara Szczesniak]

Thanks for the clarification, @Andy Gladstone; I did not see the difference looking at the screenshots.

If I'm understanding this correctly: this means that, when you collapse the sidebar, you won't see the app switcher, tool name/logo, or expand/collapse icon. And, when you display and scroll the sidebar, these items will be included in the scroll, giving you space to see 1.5 to 2 more items in the sidebar?

I'm not sure I see the point of this change.

[Dave Liao]

@Varsha Patel - please consider retaining the "[" keyboard shortcut for collapse/expand the sidebar. For me, it feels "lighter" to be able to tap a single key to hide/show the sidebar.

I do appreciate that the navigation refinement makes it slightly more obvious how to collapse/expand the sidebar. Probably should have that control say "Collapse" or "Hide" in addition to the icon to assist in discoverability.

[Varsha Patel]

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts and questions here.

We realized we missed including some important context in the original post. Apologies for that!

From feedback (especially from Confluence users), we learned that:

• The expand/collapse button was hard to find, which made it unclear how to show or hide the sidebar.
• The partial-height sidebar caused confusion, since some elements stayed fixed while others scrolled, leading to visibility issues when toggling.

This update makes the sidebar full height, so everything within it scrolls together. The goal is to create a more consistent and discoverable interaction across Atlassian apps. This is part of our ongoing effort to make navigation seamless, not a standalone change. 

What’s not changing:

• There’s no real estate lost or gained. This update doesn’t affect how much content you can see. It just changes how the sidebar behaves when you expand or collapse it.
• You’ll still see all the same controls as before. This is purely an interaction improvement based on user feedback about confusion and discoverability.

[Rune Rasmussen]

@Varsha Patel Thank you for the clarification.

Piggybacking of off @Dave Liao's comment on keyboard shortcuts, a bit of feedback related to that:

Having [ be the button to show/hide the side panel, or soon Ctrl+[, probably works well on keyboards with an English qwerty layout, but for us in Scandinavia, for instance, we have to press AltGr+8 to make that symbol.
So with the new keyboard shortcut we'll have to press CTRL+AltGr+8.
It can technically be done, but it is a rather awkward way of contorting your fingers.