Disabling and enabling apps
You can enable or disable Atlassian application apps (also known as add-ons or plugins) for Atlassian Server applications from the Manage add-ons or Manage apps page. Disabling an app makes its features unavailable in the application, but it doesn't actually remove it. Disabling apps is sometimes useful for troubleshooting application problems, and disabled apps can always be re-enabled later.
Apps that are essential for system operation can't be disabled.
If you want to remove an app from your application instance completely, uninstall the app.
You can disable user-installed apps individually or all at once (safe mode).
On this page:
Disabling an app
To disable a user-installed app in your application:
- From the top navigation bar in your application, choose Apps > Manage apps
- Find the app you want to disable then choose Disable.
Once the app is disabled, its features are immediately unavailable in the application. If existing artifacts use the app, you may see an error message. For example, if you disable the Team Calendars in Confluence, existing pages that have a calendar will display an 'unknown macro' error.
System apps often can't be disabled, because they're integral to the operation of your application.
Unsubscribing and uninstalling paid apps in Cloud instances
Apps cannot be disabled in Atlassian Cloud applications. To stop using an app, you must either uninstall, or unsubscribe, which cancels your subscription to the app.
Enabling an app
To enable a user-installed app in your application:
- From the top navigation bar in your application, choose Apps > Manage apps
- Find the app you want to enable then choose Enable.
Disabling or enabling all apps (using Safe Mode)
Running your Atlassian Server application in Safe Mode disables all user installed apps at once. All apps that were disabled when you entered Safe Mode will be re-enabled when you exit Safe Mode.
To enable safe mode:
- From the top navigation bar in your application, choose Apps > Manage apps
- Choose Enable safe mode at the bottom of the page.
All user-installed apps are disabled and your application now runs in safe mode, as indicated by the message on the page.
When finished, you can exit safe mode by clicking one of these links in the Safe Mode banner:
- Exit Safe Mode and restore the previous configuration enables user-installed apps, restoring your configuration to the state before you entered Safe Mode.
- Exit Safe Mode and keep the current configuration enables user-installed apps, keeping all changes made to your configuration while in Safe Mode.
Temporarily disable apps on startup
If you're troubleshooting a problem with an app, or if Confluence or Jira won't start after an upgrade or app update, you can temporarily disable apps on startup. This will allow you to start Confluence or Jira, and then use UPM to uninstall the problematic app.
You can choose to disable all apps, or disable particular apps, which is useful when trying to narrow down which app is causing the problem.
The way you do this depends on your application and operating system.
- For Confluence Server, see Start and stop Confluence with apps disabled
- For Jira Server applications, see Starting JIRA - Manual Start with Apps disabled
The parameters are applied at startup, and do not persist after a restart. Use UPM to permanently disable an app.
The option to start Confluence and Jira with apps disabled is not available for Data Center.