Announcement: Sunsetting the Jira Cloud for Mac App

[Justin]

@Vadim Trifonov 

I appreciate your dedication to the Mac app; however, as it is no longer supported I suggest not rely on it for your critical work, and move to Jira on the web, or on mobile devices.

But that's exactly why we need the native app. The web version is unreliable. On several occasions, the desktop app has been the only way we could continue work when the web version was down. The Mac app, on the other hand, has never failed to perform (except yesterday when Atlassian disabled it, but that's not the app's fault).

The mobile apps are nice for the people who want to have more convenient access on their personal devices, but they do not cover the use cases that the native desktop app does.

As an aside, I am glad that you're at least responding to this thread. I'm not sure if Atlassian assigned you to damage control, or if you're doing it on your own. If the former, then at least we have a tiny amount of hope that Atlassian is aware of the problem, and if the latter, then I'm glad someone who (from what I see) actually worked on the product is interested in the response to its discontinuation. And maybe you, combined with the incredible volume of feedback, might have a chance of convincing whoever needs to make the decision to reinstate the Mac app.

[Eric Gage]

Well...I only use Jira now when working with a company that uses Jira. For my own businesses, I have switched to Notion which does have a Mac app. Having a Mac app differentiated Jira in a good way.

Having the Mac iOS app disabled for MacOS on Apple Silicon is baffling as well. I use several iOS apps on my Apple Silicon laptop and they work great. 

[Will S]

+1 for Apple Silicon enabled mobile app.

[Vadim Trifonov]

JIRA team are completely blind (or idiots) to ignore all these comments that looking for desktop app!

We are not ignoring them, many of us have used and loved the app. However, there are many factors at play that might not be evident at first sight, to name a few:

* Mac Catalyst technology didn't prove to be as reliable and seamless as we expected it to be.

* As it is based on the iOS app codebase, it could never reach feature parity with the web Jira, nor serve the majority of our users who are on other platforms (Linux, Windows, etc).

Having the Mac iOS app disabled for MacOS on Apple Silicon is baffling as well. I use several iOS apps on my Apple Silicon laptop and they work great. 

We have disabled it, because at the moment there are unresolved problems when running it on Macs with Apple silicon. However, it is something we are looking into.

[Mikhail.Shlensky]

As was expected, there was an Apple issue. Tim Cook should be informed, that Apple promises to run JIRA on Mac were broken

[Justin]

@Vadim Trifonov 

Thanks for the breakdown. I get the argument about feature parity. But again, the strength of the desktop app was never about feature parity. Jira on the web is extremely heavy and cluttered. The desktop app was a much faster and more streamlined experience.

If there's one change that could be made to make the current native desktop app better in this context, it would simply be to add a button to open the current issue in the browser, which would come into play on the occasion we need to use features not present in the app. I've replicated this on my own machine by using a background script that watches the clipboard for a Jira URL, and if the source application is the Jira desktop app, it launches the URL in a browser. This effectively allows me to turn the "copy issue link" button into a "launch in browser" button, but having it built in would be better.

The speed factor also extends to what form the replacement takes. I've mentioned before that I have two different ways to generate SSB (site-specific browser) apps, and I can package Jira into one of those and end up with a Jira "app" that has its own Dock icon. This does solve the issue of Jira tabs being buried and lost in the sea of other tabs, which is one of the reasons people want a native app. But because it's still the web UI, it's slow and cluttered in exactly the same ways. The native app, again, is far superior. This is a caution against simply packaging the web UI into an Electron app - that would not be a suitable replacement.

I'll still repeat my point about at least maintaining support for the current native app until a suitable (also native!) replacement is available. Shutting down the native app and driving users to the inferior web version is an extremely bad move, and for my part I'm just asking that the app remains available (and maintained to at least the degree of fixing breaking/critical bugs) until another option is ready.

[Scott McDowell]

Justin’s post absolutely nails it. Thank you!

Also, can we get an “open in browser” button?

[Brandon Levasseur]

This is a poor and irritating decision. Jira wants to be a productivity and management tool, yet their impacting my productivity by removing something they offered that made it easier to deal with their toolchain.

Justin above has nailed the exact point though.

[Mikhail.Shlensky]

Where is our favourite JIRA desktop application? we missed it so much 😭

[Rodney Marable]

Translation: we don't have the resources to maintain development of a native macOS application so we'll just leave CONFCLOUD-68826  open in perpetuity.

This is hugely disappointing.

[Florent MORIN]

Sad news. MacOS app had a better user experience.

[makorh]

As Confluence at least can be installed as a "Webapp" on new macOS Sonoma, I tried it and yes, you can install both Confluence and JIRA as webapps.

[Erik Pearson]

Still use it daily.

Sometimes I imagine a year and half of improvements...

Thus starts an infinite loop of optimism and regret: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/jira-cloud-app-for-mac.

[MobilityStream]

... or you can use this, @Erik Pearson : 

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mobility-for-jira-team/id898500641

... so you don't only have to imagine the improvements but are actually able to use them ;)

Kind regards,

The Mobility Team

[Connor Fanning]

Is this app still under sunset? It's still quite featured on this page which certainly had my hopes right up.. https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/next-gen 

[Justin]

Update: the desktop app is still a critical part of the Jira workflow. Despite not being updated, desktop notifications are still working and the native app remains the only reliable way to get them.

The web app continues to become worse and worse, with performance and responsiveness at an all-time low.

DO NOT ABANDON YOUR CUSTOMERS. KEEP THE NATIVE APP WORKING.

[San Misc]

WORST DECISION EVER! i don't want to open browser and be lost in all the tabs, a native app is so convenient to receive notifications and to navigate smoothly

[Pavel Rekunov]

Sunsetting Jira Desktop app in 2022 was a horrible decision 🫣 I write this in 2024 and the Jira web app is inefficient and hard to use in a browser.

i have to switch between tabs constantly, working in Jira, Outlook, Teams, search engine, chatGPT and more!

having a Jira desktop app for Mac enabled me to swipe between apps fast and efficient. Not anymore.

whoever made this decision has done wrong.

i really consider to move our company to Asana or Wrike JUST for the reason they have a desktop app for Mac.

[j4hangir]

Bring the support back please, the level of snappiness and convenience one gets the standalone app is far superior to the web version.

[Mariano]

Terrible decision, as Jira Cloud on Browser is terrible. At least with an App we could try renicing the process and get some improvement maybe. Also it's easier and faster to click on a dock icon than having to go through tabs.

👎

[Rick Dawson]

At least bring back the existing app. If there aren't enough resources to support it, fine, but removing it completely is just a terrible choice. The local app is faster and easier to automate with. I'd say more but others have already done so better than I could. 

Bring back the native Desktop App. 

[maximo_lucosi]

The native app experience was great, fast, and reliable. I understand the rationale for cutting costs and making the deployment of new features easy to manage, but this is not a compelling reason to eliminate one of the best solutions for daily users. I don't know the formula for success, but I know that if a corporation decides not to listen to its customers, it will always fail.