Dark Features in Confluence

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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

Summary

Some of the features in Confluence are not enabled by default and may be implemented as  Dark Features

Certain advanced aspects of Confluence behavior might not have their configuration pages, being controlled by application properties or system properties instead. Additionally, some features and behaviors are usually hidden from users by default. These dark features can be turned on for an instance by the Confluence administrator. Dark features give advanced users the possibility to enable or disable specific functionalities.

Be careful with dark features as they may cause problems if misused since they will impact the entire instance. They should only be used when instructed to and preferably it should be tested on a lower environment when available. As always, a full backup is advised before making changes to Dark Features for the first time.

Managing Dark Features

To manage Dark Features you need to be a Confluence admin. It is possible through the link mentioned below:

  1. Go to <confluence-url>/admin/darkfeatures.action

The Dark feature view looks like below.

Enabling a Dark Feature

In order to enable a feature flag, type in the Enable dark feature text area and click the Submit button.

e.g. To revert to Edit in Office functionality:

  1. Go to <confluence-url>/admin/darkfeatures.action
  2. Add the enable.legacy.edit.in.office dark feature flag and select Submit.

You need to be logged in as an administrator to do this. Once you enable the dark feature, you can see them on the <confluence-url>/admin/darkfeatures.action page as shown below.

If you want to view the dark features enabled by admin through a DB query, please run the below query. The BANDANAVALUE column will give you the list of dark features.

select * from BANDANA where BANDANAKEY = 'confluence.darkfeature';

Disabling a Dark Feature

To disable a feature flag:

  • Click Remove link next to the specific feature flag in the left section (as shown on the screenshot below)
  •  You can also use the following SQL to disable the dark feature. The Confluence cache will need to be flushed after that.
    • (warning) Please take a backup of the DB table before  doing the deletion. Below query will delete all dark features. 
delete from BANDANA where BANDANAKEY = 'confluence.darkfeature';
  • If you have multiple dark features enabled, you need to use the below queries.
    • select bandanavalue from BANDANA where BANDANAKEY = 'confluence.darkfeature';
      
      --Result in my local instance
      <string>site-wide.shared-drafts,cql.search.screen</string>
      
      E.g. I need to remove cql.search.screen
      
      Update BANDANA
      set bandanavalue='<string>site-wide.shared-drafts</string>'
      where BANDANAKEY = 'confluence.darkfeature'; 
      
      



Last modified on Nov 3, 2022

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