How to turn off or revert back to old JIRA interface

[Kate Chamberlin]

I am not a programmer but use JIRA to document and track my software change requests, bugs, etc.

I made the mistake of "trying out" the new interface.

I want to go back to the classic JIRA interface I know how to use.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you, Kate

[Matt Tse]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for sharing your feedback and voicing your thoughts with us. I work on the product management team for Jira Cloud and we've been trying to think through ways to improve the navigation & overall wayfinding of the product. 

I recently published an open call for people to give us some feedback on an exploration we're doing at the moment to look into this "Jira interface" topic more deeply. I'd love it if you could head on over to https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-discussions/Calling-all-Jira-Cloud-users-Give-us-feedback-on-our-exploration/m-p/1126694 and let us know what you think!

Cheers,

Matt

[Dhiraj Menon]

@Matt Tse Can you tell me how do I create a project plan or Gantt chart on JIRA cloud. I do not have admin privileges but if I have to would I need admin rights.

Something similar to this

Tasks                Owner             Duration       Status

 Task 1  

     -Subtask 1 

     -Subtask 2

Looking forward to your help

[Matt Tse]

Hi @Dhiraj Menon ,

Apologies for the late response. Would you mind sending me an email? I can better address your concerns there.  You can reach me at mtse[at]atlassian.com.

Cheers,

Matt

[Alejandro Saldaña Algarra]

The interfaces must be easy and intuitive. This forces you to separate "important data" from supposedly less important data. This is not true, the information seems "hidden" unlike the previous interface, preventing in many cases a more intuitive management as before. The division of information does not seem right to me. Nor do I know who defined which fields are more important than others, but for my case in question, it is not accurate at all. Would it somehow be possible to reverse this change for a group of people?

Thanks for everything.

[Jennifer Zou]

Ugly new interface.  I am sorry to say this, but this is what I feel. Maybe it's just me...

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, it's not just you, there are plenty of people complaining.

Even I don't like it, and I'm an Atlassian fan.  It's not the layout for me, but that I don't have the options I actually use immediately available.  I should be able to click once and start typing a search (like the old UI).  I should have instant access to admin functions.  The page tree in Confluence should be there, not buried behind several clicks.  And so-on.

[Joseph Yoder]

This is a bigger issue, they have made changes to the layout of the UI, I agree the 1-click and go is gone. Filtering has changes, searches has changed, entering Issues has changed, and now in the middle of projects people have to relearn JIRA. Complete waste of time to teams, lost productivity to projects. This was a complete fail as a rollout and should be documented. 

[Chris Mealey]

It's almost like I was driving a car that had control knobs for common things like volume, HVAC and hard buttons for lights and now I have to look away from the road for 30 seconds to use a touch screen to navigate 12 screens to turn off the heater... 

[Lillian Shibata-Salley]

Been using this for over a week and that's the best analogy lol Feel like I'm going to crash - I had feedback from my users and they are frustrated as well...

[Christoph Morrison]

I signed up for it just to agree with you.
The new design is ugly and makes me and my team unproductive.

Atlassian should quickly offer a possibility to use the old design again.

[Mark Thompson]

You are rapidly losing me as a Jira fan.  I HATE the new interface.  You forced a change on me while I was in the middle of using the system.  Now I have to relearn during critical path.  Frankly I'm kind of pissed off.  Many times I direct the company I'm at toward a bug database.  Your new complaint model and your "improved" look and feel makes the tool harder to use.  I had everything at my fingertips and now I have to bore in and relearn something that has a look and feel I don't like.  Great way to keep your admins happy.

[Keith Beckwith]

JHFC, this 'new experience' inhales harder than a $.50 morale inflation professional.

Why do you keep forcing this bovine discharge on us? Are you TRYING to lose customers?!?

[Mark Thompson]

@Keith Beckwith - they must be looking for a write off because of the new tax plan.  It's all Trumps fault

[Sergey Shelukhin]

I think it's just some PMs/leads trying to justify their salaries. This is not the first time either, I use multiple JIRA instances and it's hilarious how they all have different UI all the time, sometimes radically different, based on their update schedule; because like in one Dilbert cartoon, people who have time are allowed to run things while smart people are too busy fixing stuff.

There's absolutely no reason to reshuffle buttons in the UI other than for some PM to look good at some meeting. "Congratulations team on the rollout of project Stir The Lasagna!". Who cares? Nobody cares. Is the new UI even an improvement? That's questionable to start with. But even if it was to some extent, is it worth it? From users perspective, if someone moved my light switch or my car volume knob into a slightly better position, it's a miniscule improvement but weeks/months of re-learning where it is as I stumble in darkness or get distracted from the road. From company perspective it's a colossal waste of time that could have gone into real new features (that might actually justify new UI) or bug fixing. The only person who actually benefits is some *** sending status updates.

[Chris Mealey]

@Mark Thompson Atlassian is outta Sydney, the impacts of tax plan are a few years out down under. 

[Mark Thompson]

Um that was a joke.  In the US anything that goes wrong seems to be blamed on Trump regardless of how distant he actually is from the issue.  Maybe I can modify it.  Trump is implementing a new import tax on Steel and Aluminum and that tax will drive up costs of hardware for Atlassian causing them to pay more tax and hence need a write off.  It's kind of like the 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon.  A new parlour game when Trump became POTUS.  8-)

[Chris Mealey]

Sorry, I wasn't thinking of the new tariff stuff, it's not law yet and in my opinion I don't think he knows what to do with international trade and he's just testing the waters to see how the markets react to potential ideas.

[Craig]

Who actually decided that the present jira interface works? why has it been altered? I am a big user of jira and its benefits along with other tools that support it.

At present we are implementing a trial period on it for my new company but to be quite honest the ui alone is putting not only me but new advocates off it.......seriously unneeded complexity.

whether the masses prefer the new one or not its a ui layout.......congratulations on making something that was pretty easy to seriously over complex for the sake of hiding stuff.

[Jerry Stejskal]

Lost my old default and now feeling everyone's collective pain!! Who the **## decided "yeah end users will love our new UI!" What?!

[Mark Thompson]

You really should fire the designer of this new UI.  How could I possibly think this is better.  In the prior UI to admin a project

1.  Select Administration

2.  Click projects or issues or whatever you want to admin

3.  Scroll to project and click it

4.  Find my custom field values

In the new UI:

First figure out that projects is not what you use to admin a project

1.  Click settings

2.  Click Projects

3.  Click Projects again

4.  Scroll to project and click it

5.  Scroll to project and click it (didn't work the first time)

6.  Try to find my custom field values to edit and fail

7.  Contemplate an alternative to Jira.

[Paul Amarante]

- Create Issue No Longer works using IE 11 (Corp still in Win 7), I waited 5 mins, for shits and giggles, just to see if it would work, nope, I need to  jump to FF to create a new issue/story, etc.

- General Jira navigation is 3-4X as slow, destroying my productivity, extremely frustrating

- Why did they get rid of upper right side search bar ? let me guess, 3-4 clicks for same functionality now.

WE ARE DEVELOPERS/ADMINS/PMS WE DO NOT NEED A PRETTY UI, WE NEED A FAST INTERFACE THAT WORKS !!!!

[Shalvika Sood]

So So true! The Navigation is 10x horrible and the speed is 4-5X slower

The top right pane for quick search was SOOO helpful and now they have made it a huge overlay that makes me want to whack someone. It appears that NOONE at Atlassian really cares about what the users think and feel.

The last time there was such a huge outcry against a change was when Microsoft came with that disastrous Vista.

[Mark Thompson]

Wonder what happened to Vista?

[Jennifer Zou]

Yep, and this is the reason I don't like the new interface. and I feel that once we get used to an interface, it is hard for us to change.

[Mark Thompson]

FYI - I've used the new Jira for a almost a month now.  I can confirm I still hate the new UI, it's still making my job harder, and this feeling is not going to change over time.  It is not growing on me.  I've had fungal infections I enjoyed more.

[Sebastian Koch]

Fully agree and shout out to that descriptive comparison with fungus infections.

[Andrew]

not only that but companion apps such as hipchat continue to refer to old look of jira in documentation. this is absolutely frustrating when the whole point of this tool is to reduce frustration in project managing.

great job on alienating your entire existing user base.

[Amanda Foo]

I can't see my labels anymore!!!

[somethingblue]

Hi Kate,

In new versions of JIRA, the interface change is something that is not interchangeable with old versions in that sense. 

In light of that there are two things I would recommend:

1. Create a Suggestion on JAC for interface templates that can be interchanged
2. Change what you can via the Configuring the Look and Feel of your JIRA Applications knowledge base article
3. Use an add-on such as CUTE for JIRA to modify the interface

If you're using Cloud and you're referring to the new look:

1. Click on your user avatar in the bottom left
2. Choose Turn off for now

Cheers,

Branden

----------

Edit:

At the time of this original post, Branden's answer was both correct and accurate for Server and Cloud platforms of Jira.  However since that time, Jira Cloud sites no longer have the ability for users to switch back to the old interface. 

Edit added 5 November 2018

[Kate Chamberlin]

Thank you Branden:

I appreciate your helpful suggestions. You made my day.

- Kate

[Lana]

. @Braden, what if i don't have that option any longer? I saw this option before but now when i click on user avatar that option is no longer there?

[Dave S_]

Oh, the usual reply: If you don't like Atlassian's decisions, just install an addon for thousands of dollars ... :-/

[Joseph Yoder]

I tried to go there, and this has been disabled.

1. Click on your user avatar in the bottom left
2. Choose Turn off for now

Why would you not be allowed to use the old UI, this is horrible, I am an Admin, and now I can't even find that functionality. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, it was always the intention to turn off the old interface on Cloud after a while.

[Mark Thompson]

All I know is I heard the people in my office talking.  They tried to use the new version when it came out (we have early adopters here).  I did not hear one person say they liked it.  I heard many say they hated it and "How do I get back to the old version".  Just because users tolerate it doesn't mean they like it or will recommend it when going to a new company.  Lots of the people here are administrators and have the ability to at least influence the product used by the company they are at.  You are losing me with this forced new interface, the inflexibility of preventing upgrade, and your new voting policy for issues.  It's something you can get away with on free software.  Doesn't fly as well on paid software when users are not given the choice on upgrading.  I won't forget that and it will influence my decision at any new company.  Forcing a change with no ability to revert is never something an administrator likes.  Just my 2 cents.  

[Accounts Payable]

If we are going to have to re-learn everything anyway, I think I am going to have our team switch to one of Amazon's new offerings and learn that. 

Atlassian, this new UI is a joke, and it has diminished our productivity significantly while  rendering some things unusable.. Why did you have to fuss with something that just worked? 

[Ivan Ristic]

They made it much slower, more complex and ugly in design.

This was HUGE step backward.

[Simon Caygill]

Agreed, I cannot believe this is a good forward step.

[Alex Kovshovik]

Finally, this is why nothing works:

• Wiki table formatting syntax doesn't work because new UI uses markdown syntax: https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/WikiRendererHelpAction.jspa?section=tables
• Markin plugin doesn't work to bring markdown support - because of this horrendous "new" UI?
• Markdown is very basic. Github flavored markdown supports tables. Jira's doesn't.

Arghh. so frustrated.

[Denis Mullaraj]

Is not working anymore the turn off option... 

[Bryon_Fevens]

A fan of JIRA since, gosh, 2004, 2005 ish?

Worse thing I've seen them do in this time frame. 

Always championed them (with a fair bit of success) to be used where they were not.

Now, it's no longer the exceptionally productive tool it once was; either as admin or as user.

I cannot begin to understand how they thought this was an improvement. Seems like change for changes sake.

I think I will need to start looking at alternatives; between pricing and the loss of efficiency, etc, it's no longer the obvious choice.

[Kristian Broe]

Im running Jira for 60-100 users.

And invested time hoping it was an expected switching cost for benefit of an improved tool. It turned out not to be the case.

its a substantial step down IMO

[Anders Hjorth]

It turned out to be very simple for me:  Add ?oldIssueView=true to the URL in the Address bar, like this:

https://my-domain.atlassian.net/browse/CAP-1438?oldIssueView=true

[Anders Hjorth]

After I deleted the atlassian.net cookies, a banner offered me the option to switch to the old ticket view. Clicking this banner added ?oldIssueView=true to the URL.

[Ineke Appelman]

Please add the answer for this topic: How can I revert back to the old Jira Interface!

[Craig]

Couldn't agree more.....we are all looking for a solution not a debate or spinning off into other requests.

[Bragi Baldursson]

Absolutely terrible UI.  Now it takes 3-5+ clicks what took 2 clicks before.   Very counter-intutive and confusing even after using it for a couple of months.   

[Sebastian Koch]

Working and especially administrating Jira became a pain with the new UI. I am spending 5x more time to change permissions, add projects and maintain our work with external clients. Did anyone test out the number of steps necessary for certain tasks in both versions? It became a click-click-click-follow-link-click-get-lost-hell

Terrible.

[Paul Amarante]

Funny Story., the other day I saw a guy on my train with an Atlassian bag, and I asked him "did you guys actually QA/UAT your new interface for Jira and ask people what they think" ?  He said to me "I do not work for them anymore, and my new organization ditched Jira"

What a surprise.

[Shalvika Sood]

Omg , that IS hilarious. The person shouldn't carry Atlassian bag for security reasons. Who knows which disgruntled user may unleash their fury on him !

Btw, the QA wouldn't report these issues because the Product team would say that this is an approved 'change'. The UAT would have been with the Product team itself, so again no feedback from actually those who are affected.

[Shalvika Sood]

I am somewhat surprised at the lack of response from Atlassian team that has completely ignored user feedback to the new UI. It is impractical to use, counter-intuitive, extremely poor use of colors , the Search overlay completely covers half the screen, thereby effectively blocking what one may be looking at simultaneously,  Trying to d a custom search meaning drilling down to the Nth degree - among the many other faults. There was analogy to cars and controls and needing 30seconds to just know how to navigate and that was spot on. I can understand that design is a subjective thing, but this goes beyond it - at the end of the day there is something called user feedback and as far as i can see, it has been overwhelmingly negative. Why ask for feedback if you're not interested in it?

[Tommie White]

Really not a fan of the new layout, from being able to navigate for issues relatively quickly, I now feel like i'm just learning to use Jira for the first time all over again.

It feels as though there needs to be an option to revert back to the vanilla look, because productivity is going to go down for the team i work in whilst people try and familiarise themselves with how to navigate the system.

[Mark Thompson]

This is just a place for us to vent.  They aren't going to do anything to help us.  Hey Jira how about letting us vote on a bug to revert to the old UI?  I really need a menu that runs along the top of the UI and collapses.  I can't expand my UI properly anymore because you didn't concern yourself with people who might have low vision.

[Keith Stone]

The new UI is buggy and very slow.  We need the option to disable and go back to what worked.  Getting ready to buy 500 more licenses but you may have made my decision for me.  Going to another product.  This is crazy!

[Laurence Giglio]

I was able to revert back a few weeks ago but not anymore.

Shame really - as I was very productive with the previous interface. I'll just have to customize it.

How did they conduct their Human Usability Laboratory Tests ?

Some of the UI widget placements violates most Human Interface Guideline Standards.

[Paul Amarante]

Why as a technical person do I want additional UI components, that slow me down ?  I want custom controls, I will script them, a simple, fast interface is what I want, and I assume most others, and it's slow as sh!t.

[Paul Amarante]

I already specified the old interface, 3X already !!!! but for some reason, you choose to keep switching me back, STOP IT !!!!  I find the new interface slow, and I do not want the bells and whistles, I would like if you "slimmed" it down more.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I'm afraid they're going to remove the option to go back at all very soon.  You might as well get used to it.

(Or, better, migrate to Server, where you won't get the new UI for a long time, hopefully long enough for it to be fixed or abandoned)

[Megan Bute]

I believe the ability to go back is gone. It's missing from the feedback and settings menus

[Paul Amarante]

Megan, in the famous line from "Goodfellas", "It's gone, and there's nothing we can do about it, dat's dat"

[Paul Traskal]

This is like when Coke messed with the formula and all their customers started leaving.

[Lillian Shibata-Salley]

Hi just tried the new interface and one of the main simple function is missing - when looking at issues, the actual issue I'm viewing isn't highlighted so have to always scroll back up to remember  which number I'm looking at - the old view always had it bolded or highlighted so I knew which one I was on and can continue moving down the list...

After the trial, doesn't have anywhere I can see to switch back or provide feedback.

Thanks

[Dave S_]

Unfortunately, Atlassian made the ugly new UI mandatory, and removed access to the nice, efficient old UI. 

[Mark Thompson]

Worse yet.  I miss rational.

[Steve Smith]

At long last! 

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/A-better-navigation-for-Jira-Cloud-is-coming-soon/ba-p/1216077

[Doods Perea]

I don't think this addresses the issue of classic vs new ticket view.  The upcoming change (Q1 2020) is on navigation/menus.

We hope Atlassian can add in the Administration section an option to toggle between new and classic ticket view that applies globally. Users can then opt to use it or set to new in their respective Profiles.

Cheers!

[Steve Smith]

Cool.

Cheers is filmed in front of a live studio audience.

[Bruno]

This side Layout is really bad for the users....
We also want to change

[Mark Thompson]

There is currently a new UI for ticket management.  Before we get stuck with that maybe the people that disliked this change would like to comment here before we are stuck with a another set of changes that kill usability on cloud:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-discussions/Discussion-on-new-UI-in-right-hand-side-of-Jira-tickets/m-p/889717#M947%3Futm_source=atlcomm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=immediate_general_reply&utm_content=topic

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Indeed, that's a good conversation about the new issue view, rather than the Cloud layout changes.

[Blake K]

This is bad. This changed in the middle of our SW release and has slowed my team down. I Can't believe they removed the option to revert back to the classic UI. Bad move, we may end up switching our software if we can't switch back.

[Simon Caygill]

I have just returned from holiday and cannot find my way around, I did not like the new UI before and I still hate it!!!

Is Atlassian listening to users, or do they just not care?

[Alex Olivier]

Is there NO way to revert to the previous navigation?

I recommended Jira to our Company and after long battles we finally got the ok.

This navigation is ..... *insert coarse language*

Atlassian are you guys trying to alienate long term users?

Please let us have the original navigation back, this new way is .... *insert more coarse language * 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

As stated many times above, no.  It's gone, removed from Cloud.  Your only option for the old navigation is to migrate off Cloud on to a Server install.

[Alex Olivier]

Time to find alternatives then.

[Lillian Shibata-Salley]

AAAAgh... just getting so frustrated with this new GUI... 

To try and view as per attached is so frustrating... the left frame keeps jumping back but I want it open and leaves narrow area for comment and have to keep scrolling to see everything..... There HAS to be a better way of using this... can you please tell your management to provide an option to go back to the original design - Go back, and spend more time on all the feature requests for functionality we need than all this time on the gui where it was great the way it was...

Also not having my project issues actually IN my project is very frustrating to go back and forth clicking on main JIRA icon and looking through all my projects to find the one for my project... this should be a basic function! Keep whatever is for the project.... within the project...

I would've created a ticket but will be told that I need to get used to the new gui. Been using this and the more I use this the more frustrated I'm getting... 

[OptimiziramSi]

Completely lost with your new UI. Navigation is sometimes animated other times animates and then refreshes the whole app. Having multiple ways/views for the same thing in multiple places is very confusing. Finding and managing settings is a labyrinth of its own.

[Alex Gottschalk]

How do we revert Confluence and Jira to the old UI?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Migrate to Server.  You can't turn the new UI off on Cloud.

[Mark Thompson]

Every time I use this Jira I get more and more upset with the new UI.  Having to navigate this tree over and over and over again just because I use the back arrow on my browser is annoying as heck.  I can be buried 4 levels into the tree, use the browser back arrow, and I'm forced to navigate through the flow back to the position in the tree to perform additional actions.  Give us the option to have an easy access upper menu like we had before.  Don't tell us you can't.  We all work in the software industry and know there is no "can't".  There is a "don't want to do it".  Jira seems to be very adept at implementing the "I don't want to do it" option.