Thanks for your patience as we’ve been carefully reviewing responses to our recent announcement. As a follow-up, I have consolidated top questions to clarify in this post.
But before diving in, I want to thank you all for your engagement with us. We will continue to listen to your feedback, and will answer any questions you have here in our community.
Yes, the Jira for Mac and our iOS App share the same codebase. However, there are some intentional differences between the Mac app and the iOS app in terms of design approach and user interactions that make it non-low effort for the team to maintain and provide the desktop experience that people want and expect from Atlassian.
When we first launched the Mac app, customers just wanted to be able to use the app for quick in and out tasks. Since then, we’ve spoken to many customers and heard that you all want more features in the Mac app so you can use it as an alternative to using the web version of Jira.
To add to this, we need to acknowledge that the vast majority of users of this codebase are iPhone users. Improvements that are the next most important things for our desktop users most likely are not the things that make sense for phones. As the needs of Mac and iPhone users widened, it made it more challenging for us to meet the needs of Mac users. We believe that the best desktop experience for Jira isn't going to be a Catalyst-ported iOS app.
Please add what you love about the Mac app here so we can better evaluate an alternate multi-platform desktop app.
Yes! You and your team still have access to, and can use the Jira for Mac app for the foreseeable future. We just won’t be shipping updates, bug fixes, or responding to support tickets starting in February.
We hear your concerns regarding the speed of web, and are actively working on building the fastest version of Jira. In the last year we’ve made progress on several performance improvements, including making viewing issues 1.5x faster, and having issues create and loading dashboards at 2x faster speed.
We have work underway, are taking your feedback, and will continue to share updates in the Community.
We love that you love dark mode, and we are actively working on bringing this to Jira web. You can follow our progress at https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-63150.
Yes, we will continue support for Jira on iPad. In fact this decision will allow us to accelerate adding more tailored experiences and features for work on both mobile devices and tablets.
I appreciate you sharing your responses and feedback, and hope this post helped clarify some concerns. Please continue to share your experience, and we are here to help you navigate through the changes.
Hi @Garry Taulu , iPad doesn’t use Catalyst. Catalyst actually introduced new complications for some of our components, that do not exist on iPad. That's why we can continue to invest on iPad.
I am aware that iPad doesn’t use Catalyst. There are great apps that use custom controls that have managed to create a great Mac experience. One that comes to mind is Vectornator which manages to create great touch first experiences on iPhone and iPad and a great mouse and keyboard experience also on iPad but also on Mac. They were also one of the first adopters of Catalyst. Here’s a reference to their old blog post about it https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-makes-great-mac-app-vladimir-danila
Hi @Irene ,
Any plan on allowing us with M1 Macs run the iPad app on macOS? Shouldn't add any extra complexity to your iPad OS codebase and let us use jira in an app (although maybe not as native as today). I'm agreeing with the rest of the crowd that I'm not interested in using Jira in my browser or in an electron app.
Hi @Cesar , We'll be looking into that option yes but no commitment / eta as yet. We had a look a while ago when it was first announced and on DTK, and there were issues. But also at that time we were still fully supporting the Mac app. So now we'll be looking into it carefully, taking into account the optimisations we want to do on the iPad app as well.
Will you open-source the Mac app or have a convenient way for the community to create Mac alternative of its own?
Hi @Gutte . Not at the moment. Since the Mac app shares the same codebase with our Jira iOS app, then that means also exposing our iOS app code. If there's a way that doesn't expose it, we can look into it more.
For me, the majority of the point in having an app is to not use the browser. It's not about performance, nor theme, it's about headspace.
My browser is where *everything* is. All of the tabs are open, and it's essentially a Wild West. Having an app for workflow critical software lets me compartmentalise. I might need to hunt for a browser tab, but there's always a Jira icon in my dock.
That said, even if you do bring dark mode support to web (which you haven't for at least 8 years of a ticket being open in the topic), will it work as seamlessly with the system level settings? Or will I once again have a sub-par experience where I have to set up specific settings for your app, instead of the system integration that a native app allows (e.g. follow system theme, system theme changes by time / sunset etc.)?
Hi Joe, thanks for your comment. May I understand further what you mean regarding dark mode working "seamlessly with the system level settings" ? Are you referring to how dark mode will be turned on/off or whether or not we will support dark mode in settings/admin areas?
Thanks
Liron
General best practise is to have 3 settings:
The latter allows for scenarios like turning everything dark after a certain time per day.
@Liron Sure - with native apps, I don't actually need to change theme settings in the app, unless I want to override. Most apps will default to following the system settings.
This means I can set dark or light mode in my system settings, and it is implemented in apps that support it, with no extra configuration on my part. I can also set my system to change that theme on a schedule, and because apps are referencing the system theme, they will not need me to update them - again, in-app settings tend to work as an override in that case.
I haven't seen many web apps that play nice with those system settings consistently. Most don't even respect browser prefers-dark-theme settings, even when they supply a dark theme.
To be clear though, my main issue is the compartmentalisation - I don't want yet another browser tab, and I can't think of a way that gets solved with a web app. Thanks for taking the time to read & clarify :)
@LironHe's talking about supporting this: https://blog.sethcorker.com/automatic-dark-mode-for-your-website/
Thanks all for shedding a light on this (excuse the pun ;) ). I'm going to take it to the team on dark mode to check and get back to you.
@[deleted] - I hear you about the compartmentalisation, definitely a valid problem we should assess. Thank you for raising it, we should have a think about the workarounds there.
@Daniel Bergquist kinda, but that article is specifically about the media query, which doesn't enjoy widespread support - that's the issue I was trying to illustrate that is much better covered by having a native app. As the goals of the web app include uniformity, I'd expect support across browsers / OSs tbh.
@Liron Thanks for listening, I really do appreciate it, but I feel a workaround will never be as good as a solution 😅 which is why I can't help being a little cynical on that part.
100% agree on the compartmentalisation of concerns. I don't want to have a browser tab open for all my tasks, getting lost in the thousands of other tabs that I have open (especially as a developer myself, who is constantly opening tabs and reopening browser windows etc). The fact that this app is disappearing is a disappointment and has made me wonder if Jira is the solution for my business or not.
On the topic of headspace vs perfs or OS integration.
I would be happy with a Chrome App, i.e. a standalone browser app that sits in the docs and can open links if set up with Choosy.app
"multi-plateform desktop app" means some Electron-based, memory-gobbling piece of junk. Please, we have enough of those already. There is no valid technical reason to stop working on the Mac app, and maintaining it should be way within your amount of resources.
Please PLEASE Atlassian, do NOT foist another terrible Electron app on the community.
Hi @guillaume_laurent & @Daniel Bergquist , if you haven't already, would love for you two to add a comment in the https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-78044 on your thoughts on Electron, or if you want to reiterate there that a native Mac app is still what you want to see.
definitely native Mac app. I believe that the amount of reactions for the sunsetting blog message speaks for itself
One more anti-Electron voice over here. I work in audio production (for video games) and when I'm really pushing against the wall with a Pro Tools mix, I can't leave Safari + Slack open without causing Pro Tools to hiccup. This is one of the (many) reasons I love the current Native app. It's remarkably CPU efficient and allows me to keep Jira open even when running the most demanding Pro Tools session.
So basically you're going to ignore anything we said on the other thread and try to yet again divert the message that Jira is better on web... when it isn't as you've been told by hundreds of others ...
I'm not sure how "meeting the needs of Mac users" involves entirely removing the app? Just sounds like corporate talk.
Can you at least commit to allowing the iPad app to be ran on M1 Macs as it is, something that is a simple check box on App Store Connect.
Vote with your feet and/or wallet. Money talks and it's the only language Atlassian understands...
I'd love to vote with my wallet. Unfortunately it's not my wallet that's paying for it. I'm sure that's the case for >90% of Atlassian users. I've tried to get my employer to move away from it, but I have had no luck yet.
You can bet that next time I'm on the job market, use of Jira or other Atlassian products will be a mark against a prospective employer.
@Rob Sammons - Hi and thanks for your comment. I just wanted to explain that the reason for this new discussion thread is that this one has threaded replies possible which makes it easier to respond and hold the conversation. Also we wanted to summarise the FAQs in one place for everyone's benefit. It is by no means a way for us to ignore anything said in the other blog. We are listening, and we are discussing everything raised here internally. None of this is easy for us and we are taking all of this to heart, honestly. I want to assure you of that.
Thank you for your comments and feedback, it is why we have these community threads, to be able to discuss these things with you. I am confident we can find a solution that will bring the best outcome for all.
I want to believe that to be true but Jiras actions and ignorance around the users on both threads don't reflect that.
Can someone pin this comment? Does Atlassian really think we users are daft? Completely ignoring, deflecting and misrepresenting feedback. Like seriously, are there humans working in this company or bots?
yes please allow the m1 arm osx to run the ipad app instead!
Just this morning I needed to check on the status of a ticket from a link, which opened in Safari. The Jira interface began to load (slowly) and after about 10 seconds I decided to just launch the app. I *manually* located the relevant board, found the ticket, checked the status, and closed the app.
About 15 seconds later, the Jira web app finally finished loading. And in case anyone is wondering, this is on a very stable 150Mbps symmetric connection with <5ms latency.
Regarding features, I'd like to clarify a statement I made on the other article regarding removing features on mobile apps. I still hold that it's a mistake to intentionally remove features from mobile apps, but I do understand there needs to be prioritization about what to focus on. Given the choice between web only, or a native app that still requires going out to the website occasionally, I'll take a lightweight native app any day. Don't eliminate the Mac app just because you don't think you can get every feature into it. Focus on making the Mac app do the things people need the most and at least we'll be able to benefit from it. Eventually we might get feature parity, but in the meantime we'll still have a far superior experience.
Remember this isn't just about superficial things like dark mode. The Jira web app is truly a productivity killer because of how badly it performs.
I can second this. I have a 1000x500 fiber connection and a pro-specc'd laptop for compiling code. The web app still runs sluggishly. The slow responsiveness plus the poor UI design causes me to dread each time I have to look at the web app.
Can you please at least support the "group by epics" view in the main board before the end of support? At the moment the tickets with an epic label remain hidden.
My point is that with the web experience quickly you end up with an over bloated amount of jira windows which tends to stay there opened and forgotten.
Hi @Paolo.Pavan , "Group by epics" is also supported on the board for in the Mac app for both Company Managed Project and Team Managed Project.
Thank you, @Irene . From which version, please? Or there is a specific setting to activate that you can point me to?
Hi @Paolo.Pavan ,on both Team Managed Project & Company Managed Project, the placement is very similar, there is a "Group by: .." drop down on the top of the board, on the same line as the "Search this board" text field.
If you don't see it, maybe first make sure to check that it's also available on the same Jira board on web. For Company Managed Project, you might need to go to the meatballs icon on top right of the board > Board Settings to activate it first.
The JIRA for iOS app has been disabled intentionally on the Mac App Store (for Apple Silicon macs). This made sense when you had a dedicated app for macOS.
Since that is not the case anymore, can we expect to be allowed to use it any time soon?
I would also support this idea and enjoy using the iOS app on my Apple Silicon mac. Even if nothing is done other than changing the setting in iTunes so that iOS app can be used, I'd probably be one to try it on my mac. In the mean time I'll keep using the mac app until it actually has problems.
would you add support for Safari push notifications? it is a major reason for me using the mac app, and i wish we could get it back on the web somehow.
Hi @yat.to , please vote here for this to be added to web: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-62163. Maybe also add in the comment how you have loved using this on the Mac app. Thanks.
Is there any way to at least remove that annoying yellow text?
In any case it's really sad to see this app go, I loved it
Sorry @Ovidijus Reipšlėger there is no way to remove this banner. Thank you for your support for the Mac app!
if you wanted to, it's just removing the line and publishing again....
@Irene Yeah, not buying it when Atlassian has the source code. 1, maybe 3, point story at the most to remove it or even provide an 'X' dismissal button.
Please add what you love about the Mac app here so we can better evaluate an alternate multi-platform desktop app.
I love that it exists and it works!
You are actually about to remove the very thing that I love about it 🤷🏻♂️
Thank you for your support for the Mac app so far @Fernando Rodriguez , know that it wasn't an easy decision to make.
This is again the same kind of behavior we saw from 1Password: You're too enthusiastic about making some trendy change you're not really hearing your users. Sunsetting the native Mac app is no solution *unless* you're immediately replacing it with a much better, non-electron-based, non-flutter-based, completely native and probably also usable on an iPad Native Mac App. Taking *the* UI we love won't make us love the web site. I'm thinking of going back to email and paper, or maybe use some to-do app instead at least for simpler projects...
I'm in the process of setting up multiple companies to use Jira - the Mac app is what encouraged me to do this, and for all the main reasons most of you started using it. The ease of use, the ability to add support and other tools and have them work together. But this 'sunsetting' of the Mac app, usually signals the beginning of the end for a company. Companies add features, not take them away, and they certainly don't kill a great app if they're doing "well".
I have 4 points to make:
1. This "sunsetting" business is making me reconsider my choice. How can a company have more than 10,000 employees and not be able to sustain development on an App that a company with 15 people can do.
What are they all doing?
2. You've obviously pissed off people with this decision.
3. And you've got this stupid yellow label on the Mac app that won't go away either. We get you aren't listening to your users... can we at least get our work done without reminding us every bleedin moment that your taking away a tool that actually made our lives better?
4. And last, why not charge a few bucks for the Mac app? With people paying $60+ for Omnifocus and Things, why would they not pay a few bucks for Jira for Mac. If that helps you keep the project going, why not go that route instead of canceling the project?
Charging would be bad all around - employers are the ones who usually pay (huge amounts of money, by the way) for Jira, and making it an option would just encourage them to not pay for it and leave employees to endure the web app anyway. In a lot of corporations employees aren't even allowed to buy licenses for software unless it goes through IT, so you're going to put a big load on them to manage those purchases separately.
The sad thing is that Atlassian knows employees aren't the ones who choose to use Jira, and they know that switching away from Jira is a big move for companies, and that's why they're willing to force the users to endure bad decisions. They just think it doesn't matter. It's one of the reasons software like this often loses its way with the user experience deteriorating over time - the ones who control the budget, and thus the ones whose requests and demands often drive the product's development, aren't the ones who actually use the software.
Charging for a Mac app doesn't make sense, the service is already expensive enough. When you say we pay for omnifocus or things, well, thing is much cheaper than omnifocus and both omnifocus and things come with a service, if they charged for the Mac app that wouldn't justify also charging for the service, and then, if you already subscribe the service (JIRA), you should not be paying for the app... so there's no case you can use to justify charging additional for the Mac app
Trying to convince decision makers on Atlassian Team is waste of time.
After they went IPO, everything has changed.
Arrogant is what I consider the most suitable term for them.
Unfortunately, the truth is there are almost no competitors at the same enterprise-level that can make Atlassian back to its early stage, to make products and to serve customers in a honest way.
I would like to echo the comments from others that many companies have been removing currently solution before having any other solution in place or publicly planned.
However, what I would like to suggest is a proper PWA app that is cross platform, Windows and Mac. It was mentioned in this post and I would highly recommend that this happen sooner vs later. Microsoft has this in place with Outlook for the Web and you can create a PWA directly from Edge for Windows or Mac. So something like this would be a welcomed addition.
Using tools like Unite or Coherence, this is already possible. And it's a lousy solution.
A PWA just moves the slow, buggy, laggy, memory-hogging browser tab into a separate process, where it can continue to be all of the above.
The native app, on the other hand, is much faster. Doing quick tasks takes a fraction of the time using the native app, and it can happily sit in the background without eating up huge amounts of memory.
I hope Atlassian reconsiders their stance on their macOS app. Announcing the sunsetting of their app in mid-January and just stopping development on it seems so sudden.
More transparency around the statement
the performance of Jira’s web and native mobile apps has improved and gone beyond what is possible with the Jira Cloud for Mac app
might help lessen the sting of the announcement.
but then, Apple gives you all the tools to make your iOS/iPadOS app run on the Mac... not even needing to be an Apple Silicon-based Mac! There's no way to sweeten the bad news, they've decided to get out of the native Mac app because they had already a new electron-based project to replace it with some inferior quality, probably cheaper product just to follow the trend of going PWA at all costs some people insist in promoting.
@atlassianteam
You really need to hear from users on this one. Companies that back track on their decision after overwhelming user response generally fair well. There are three topics the user community has given clear feedback on:
1) Don't get rid of Mac app. if it needs to be replaced, replace it with a native app
2) Support dark mode natively with OS integration on your web app
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-63150
3) Show subtasks in active sprints on Next-gen projects in the board view
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-18064#add-comment
I see some of these user-voice/requests/tasks/feature requests open for years without any meaningful action. A company like Atlassian should be able to deliver these features within a reasonable time frame. If you are no longer investing in Jira, your customers shouldn't invest in it either. All these actions seem to suggest your workforce is focused on something else. How can you justify not having dark mode in 2022 and have the request open since 2016?
The decisions taken on the roadmap and feature priority is concerning to me. Who are you guys listening to? Is it not the users using your product? Dark mode task has been open for more than 5 years. The subtask ticket open since 2019 and it's still under consideration. The entire nex-gen project is useless for development workflow without having visibility into subtasks on the board view. The traction on these tasks and the decisions being taken is an indicator that your product is not good fit for my use case or my company any longer. Thank you for encouraging me to look at what else is out there.
This is a bad decision. Just like other complaints I have 3 browser windows and 30+ tabs opened normally how am I supposed to find the JIRA tab? I do have the Jira page bookmarked but that means I have to do more actions just to be able to reply to issues and other tasks.
Another great use case for Mac app is notification where I can focus on my Jira tasks, sure I have slack, email, browser notifications but they are all filled with other information.
I don't need a full features Mac App, update issues, start/close sprint anything more complex I can click `Copy issue link` which takes me exactly where I need to go without having to type/click on the browser. If you are willing to spend time on a mobile app why not maintain the Mac Desktop App (who gonna use Jira on a phone screen with a virtual keyboard on a daily basis)
For anyone looking for an alternative and doesn't mind the commandline, I've been rolling with this 3rd party project: https://github.com/ankitpokhrel/jira-cli
It's missing a few features (eg. can't assign some fields, can't really view attachments). However, it is overall quite easy to use for a CLI, has Markdown support that works, is fast, and is easy to directly open an issue in the web app when needed. No more navigating slow web menus.
It's also under active development!
Atlassian, take note.
When people start building their own entire UI just to avoid using yours, it's probably broken.
The web app performance is poo poo. 2x faster is just 2x faster poo poo.
And no dark mode is total crap.
The utility of the Mac app for me is the fact I can monitor the list of notifications and jump between issues really quickly.
Previously my workflow was going to monitor my email inbox and to click the "View Issue" button the update emails.
This would launch a browser tab which, relatively speaking, takes ages.
While jumping between email inbox and browser tabs, the issue that I ran into was that with 5-6 current issues, finding the and switching between issues was slow and unnatural. Often, rather than waste time finding the tab, I would just open another tab from the issue that arrived into my email inbox. This would creating duplucate tabs of the same issue open in different windows as clicking the View Issue button on an email will always open a new tab.
Of course with discipline you can search through the many tabs but the Mac app with the list of notifications allows me to effortlessly switch between the hot issues, while not leaking memory on duplicate tabs etc.
As I see it, the web presentation would have to be much much faster than it currently is to match the productivity gain I have got from using the desktop app, and even then it would be poor second.
The web app is 10 times slower and more memory hungry. Please reconsider. You could close the web version and make only native apps.
Hello. My desire for a native application hasn't been mentioned. Most of my collaboration takes place in Zoom. When hosting a team meeting in Zoom, it is approximately 3 gazillion times easier to manage screen sharing of discrete apps than it is to deal with browser windows and tabs.
We were quite disappointed ourselves when we heard the news. To that end we have been hard at work for a couple of months and have built Japetus for Jira. We have a waitlist we are getting through as quick as we are able to ensure everyone has a great experience. If you are interested you can add yourself at https://japet.us and we will be in touch.
Hi Scott,
This looks very promising!
I've signed up for your beta.
Thanks
Dave
Hi @Tomáš Holenda , Not yet. We have found issues while testing it, some are similar issues we had with the Mac app unfortunately that requires quite some effort to resolve and maintain the fixes. More thorough testing will be done, but we can't promise anything yet at the moment.
Then why not just flip the switch?
If the issues are similar in scope to the Mac app, then it's already far superior to the web experience.
I also can't help but see the irony that you're willing to kill off a perfectly functional native Mac app because of "issues" even though the alternative web interface has far, far more (and worse) problems. That's like throwing the baby out, but keeping the bath water...