Can't Link to Local Files from within JIRA
Platform notice: Server and Data Center only. This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms.
Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
The content on this page relates to platforms which are not supported for JIRA Applications. Consequently, Atlassian cannot guarantee providing any support for it. Please be aware that this material is provided for your information only and using it is done so at your own risk.
Symptoms
It's not possible to link to a local file from within JIRA using afile://URL.
Cause
Modern browsers have security features that prevent linking from remote web pages to local content. URLs that begin with thefile://URI Scheme can only be loaded directly (by typing them into the location bar) or from pages that are loaded using thefile://URI scheme.
Workaround
Atlassian recommended workaround:
Add the content to an issue as an attachment or set up a local web server that can host the content using another protocol which won't trigger this error (http://https://ftp://
Alternative workarounds:
- You can disable this behavior in some versions of Firefox, as outlined in this blog post.
There is a registry setting for Internet Explorer that prevents sites outside the local trusted zone from accessing content within it (such asfile://URLs). For more details, please review this Microsoft KB article.
- Opera disables linking from web sites to local files, and does not provide a setting to configure this behavior. Consult the Opera documentation for possible workarounds.