How to turn off or revert back to old JIRA interface, the new one is horrendous for usability.

DRFavreau December 26, 2017

There are SO many usability issues with the new JIRA that it has become virtually unusable by a project administrator.  The little confirmation modals cover the most needed navigation on issues (so if I create a sub task I now have to dismiss the confirmation before I can create another sub task), I can only see 5 projects in my recent boards and I'm managing a project with 80 projects inside of it so now I have to constantly go back to the all boards, when before I could see all the ones I accessed in the past several weeks.  The search no longer finds anything if it isn't an exact match.  I search for 727 and it says nothing found but I have an issue called 727 and it couldn't find it.  

The layout is horrible, great for tablet users but most people using it are using computers, it's so unusable having the left bar and no longer having everything accessible at the top.  Now everything is many many clicks away and for usability you are supposed to keep things within 3 clicks.  Now I have to click 5-10 times to find something.

I want to get rid of this "new and improved" experience and go back to the old JIRA.  I'm a usability expert, I was Google's lead UX/UI Designer and Developer, and while you think you've made it more usable you've seriously reduced productivity for all managers and project administrators.  You need some very serious usability testing and training as the new interface is not usable and is not intuitive. Your changes now make your users feel stupid, which you are supposed to avoid at all costs.

I'm severely disappointed in Atlassian for forcing this update on people without thorough testing by usability experts -- and more importantly by people who have been using JIRA for years.

151 answers

45 votes
DRFavreau December 26, 2017

I finally found another topic where it was shown how to turn it off.  I really hope you don't force this version of JIRA on people, it is not usable.

25 votes
Rich Stephens March 6, 2018

The new layout is awful, horrible, inefficient and a waste of valuable space, Please revert back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

11 votes
James Ni January 3, 2018

totally agreed. 

10 votes
Jessie Williams August 20, 2018

I hate this new interface too! It's not a "getting used to it" problem, it's just poorly designed and slow. 

- I find myself scrolling much more to change the same data that used to be at the top of the ticket. Now it is poorly laid out in a tall right side column.
- They let you see the old ticket view by allowing you to click "see old view" but its really an acknowledgment by the jira devs that the new view is terrible. Why is there no way to keep the old view as your default view? People work in this software for a living and we pay for its consistency and time saving features.

- the ticket status dropdown has 2 different interfaces. It's unclear as to why one shows up vs the other. The one that shows "Transition Status to" is awful and useless. The old simple dropdown was quick and got the job done just fine.

This company is taking a perfectly useful product and driving it into the ground. We already dropped confluence because of it's false advertising about integration with jira. I guess it's time to start looking for an alternative to jira too.

8 votes
laurence March 19, 2019

 "I am sure this will happen at some point."

Well, I am still waiting in 2019... From Product person to Product person: who are you 'new view' product manager? and WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

(goes back to using comments permalinks and other great features that JIRA *used to have*)

7 votes
Andrew Dombowsky June 14, 2019

This. Why in the love of all that is holy would you move the important info (you know, the ISSUE FIELDS!!!!!) away from the center of the screen and put the comments and history there instead. How the hell are user comments more important than the information relevant to the issue itself! No more tabs? Huh? What could have possibly led to this decision? Does someone at Atlassian have connections with battery manufacturers to increase the amount of whitespace or something? With the focus and glut of info on the periphery of the screen, it's awful for landscape or portrait, it just straight up sucks.

7 votes
Jakub Musialek April 2, 2018

JIRA turn this useless interface off, it is so bad that we actually lose time because of IT 

7 votes
RV_B March 28, 2018

must revert back!!!!!!, 

7 votes
DRFavreau February 8, 2018

They put an announcement out that they're going to force the new experience on everyone in the next week.  No backing out.  That's enough to make me want to leave Atlassian.  The user experience is so horrendous with the new layout, I swear they had no discussions with current users or a usability expert before doing anything.  They really should back it out and rethink the entire thing.  You don't force something unusable on your audience because you weren't intelligent enough to consult with customers before shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars.

6 votes
Alexander Vaneker May 8, 2019

it came back!

In personal settings, JIRA Labs:

image.png

5 votes
Jude Dixon September 4, 2018

Someone somewhere has forgotten that Jira is a tool. Everybody like looking at nicely designed tools, but when it comes to doing actual work, most choose functionality above design.

While I think that there is messy infrastructure and application history to take into consideration, some choices are plain dumb. Try working with workflows on a monitor with less that perfect contrast.

With the licensing fees where they are, it would just take a couple of large customers to finance the development of an almost complete clone. I am sure this will happen at some point.

4 votes
Brandon Bernard June 14, 2019

Totally agree, the new Jira just annoys the heck out of me due to regressing in so many ways....useful info. is now HARDER to see, critical features are missing, adding well formatted comments is even harder now, etc.

4 votes
Don Joslyn September 28, 2018

The "newly improved" user interface is total garbage. It's hard to use, difficult to navigate, and SLOW! So many useless changes, it defies all logic.

Our team used to like Jira and enjoy using it, that is no longer the case.

4 votes
Cori Drew April 4, 2018

OK there's still a way to turn it off! WOOHOO!

1. In the left nav, click on your icon & click "Profile" under Your Jira.

2. Scroll down to Labs & turn off "New Jira issue view"

3. Profit :)

4 votes
DRFavreau January 21, 2018

On the profile button click turn off for now. EBE950C3-DAF0-4392-AAC8-4CE6A5711D82.png

4 votes
DRFavreau January 21, 2018

On the left at the bottom is the gear for Settings. If you click that you can choose “Dont show this again” or something like that. It’s not at all intuitive. I’ll see if I can find the article when I’m at my machine tomorrow. 

3 votes
Gerben de Graaf July 24, 2019

Please consider to keep supporting the old view indefinitely. The new view is very disruptive to my teams' workflow, to the point where we're basically losing time. That cannot and should not be the result of a UI rework effort. Thank you.

3 votes
Abigail McLane July 1, 2019

agreed - this new view is utterably horrible.  We've lost the option to see a bunch of our custom fields and I can't currently find the edit button , which is what I'm in search of now.

3 votes
Kevin Altman May 2, 2019

Just came here to say the new issue UI is awful.

3 votes
Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
Community Leader
Community Leader
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October 24, 2018

I'm afraid the only option is to migrate to Server (either hosted yourself or by a managed service provider)

I think there's a couple of good ideas in the new UI, but they're drowned out by the awfulness of the rest.

3 votes
Laimonas Vainoris September 10, 2018

I found this discussion after entering "Jira navigation best practices" into search engineThe true paradox though is that there is zero reaction from Atlassian on this thread. At the very least I would expect them to share a tutorial video that explains rationale behind this new design and share some best practices how to use it. Here I am assuming that UX of this new design was well thought through and is just an initial version and not just something that happened randomly. Is it?

3 votes
Jessie Williams August 20, 2018

It is crazy in the age of cloud computing that the discussion of using jira's server product is an alternative to prevent us from having to use a poorly designed interface. Maintaining server infrastructure comes with a whole other set of problems. Why do have to go backwards?

3 votes
Dave S_ February 14, 2018

They just removed the ability to revert to the good-looking and efficient UI. So now everyone has to use the new UI, which is neither.

3 votes
Lana February 9, 2018

it is terrible. and all videos and courses cover only old jira

2 votes
Cassie May 4, 2021

They've done it again. I can see the old view but only if I click it every time I go into a ticket.  Not allowed it as default anymore. Yet again Jira, thoroughly disappointed. 

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