Your top questions about the Jira Cloud for Mac app

[Irene]

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.

Doesn't Mac app share the same codebase with the iOS app? Tell me more about the effort required to maintain and grow this desktop app.

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.

I still want to use the Jira for Mac app! Can I?

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.

Why are you sunsetting the Jira for Mac app when web performance is slower?

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.

I love Jira for Mac dark mode, will you bring it to Jira web?

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.

Are you still investing in Jira on iPad?

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.

Thanks for your feedback

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.

[Rob Sammons]

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.

[guillaume_laurent]

"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.

[Garry Taulu]

The fact that there will still be investment in the iPad app is where it gets confusing for me. Yes the iPad is a touch-first device but you can also use it with a mouse and keyboard. There are a lot of great examples of people who have taken their iPads apps and brought them over to the Mac whilst keeping the iPad-isms on iPad and making their Mac version Mac like. Go look at the great work of Steve.

[César]

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.

[Deleted user]

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.)?

[Jag Chadha]

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?

[Justin]

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.

[Gutte]

Will you open-source the Mac app or have a convenient way for the community to create Mac alternative of its own?

[Sam Love]

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? 

[Daniel Bergquist]

Please PLEASE Atlassian, do NOT foist another terrible Electron app on the community.

[Marcelo Paredes]

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...

[Chi]

The web app is abysmal. You really need to reconsider.

[Gutte]

definitely native Mac app. I believe that the amount of reactions for the sunsetting blog message speaks for itself

[Andy M]

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)

[Scott McDowell]

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.

[Ovidijus Reipšlėger]

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

[Daniel Bergquist]

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.

[Deleted user]

@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 :) 

[Justin]

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...

[Dirk R]

The web app performance is poo poo. 2x faster is just 2x faster poo poo. 

And no dark mode is total crap.

[Daniel Bergquist]

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.

[Tomáš Holenda]

Is it possible to use iPadOS app on M1 Macs at least?

[Aristidis Zoutsos]

The web app is 10 times slower and more memory hungry. Please reconsider. You could close the web version and make only native apps.

[David Springall]

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. 

[Justin]

Atlassian, take note.

When people start building their own entire UI just to avoid using yours, it's probably broken.