Confluence Mobile
What you'll need
Confluence requirements
In order for your users to try the Confluence Data Center mobile app, you will need to:
- upgrade your Confluence site to Confluence 6.8 or later
- allow users to access your site on their device (if your site isn't accessible on the public internet, people will need be connected to your network or use a VPN)
Device requirements
In order to use the app, your users will need a device with either:
- Android 8.8 (KitKat) or later
- iOS 15 or later (iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch)
Users will need to log in to use the app, even if your site allows anonymous users.
Considerations for administrators
Here are some things to consider when determining whether your users will be able to use the app.
VPN and firewalls
If your Confluence site is not accessible on the public internet, users will need to connect their device to your network or virtual private network (VPN) in order to use the app.
We recommend providing your users with step-by-step instructions on how to connect to your VPN when you let them know the mobile app is available, as this is something Atlassian Support will not be able to help them with.
The mobile app will also attempt to check the compatibility of your site prior to presenting the login screen. If you've configured a custom filter to prevent unauthenticated requests to your server, you will need to change it to allow <confluence-base-url>/rest/nativemobile/1.0/info/login to pass through without authentication.
HTTPS and certificate requirements
In the latest version of the iOS and Android apps, you can connect to the app using either HTTP or HTTPS.
If you're using HTTPS your proxy must allow TLS 1.2 traffic. This is an iOS requirement that we've chosen to implement for both the iOS and Android apps to prevent confusion (for example where one device can log in, and another cannot).
Ideally, your certificate should be from a trusted Certificate Authority. If you have certificate that is self-signed, or from an unknown Certificate Authority (for example, you are your own CA), users may still be able to use the app by manually installing your certificate on their device. See our Knowledge base article for more information on how to do this.
iOS 13 introduced a number of other requirements that your certificate will need to meet if your users will be using the app on iOS devices. See Requirements for trusted certificates in iOS 13.
Login and authentication
The app supports all common Confluence user management configurations, including external user directories and SAML single sign-on. Users will need to sign in to use the app, even if your site allows anonymous access.
Starting from Confluence Data Center iOS mobile app 2.0, you can use the OAuth 2.0 authentication flow to:
- improve your Confluence’s security
- improve session restoration
- support Fast IDentity Online 2 (FIDO2) and other certificate-based authentication standards.
For more information, see Configure OAuth 2.0 for Confluence iOS.
User-Agent header format
The app uses an RFC-compliant user-agent header for making the requests during login. This allows us to effectively identify the app and apply further processing based on the user’s hardware and software.
Storage and encryption
The iOS and Android apps cache some content (spaces, pages, attachments) locally on the user's device. This helps keep the app responsive when navigating around pages and spaces. We don't use any application-level encryption when storing cached data, but the device's internal storage may be encrypted by the operating system.
When a user logs out, all cached data is deleted.
We don't store passwords in the app. Instead we use session cookies, which are encrypted by default.
Session timeout
Mobile apps rely only on the 401 response status code to recognize a session timeout event. If your environment has a proxy, make sure that it doesn’t override the response status code (e.g. in case of ADFS you may run into a redirect to login.microsoft.com, a 3xx status code, when your session expires). Otherwise, you might see errors like No connection or Can't show the issue/page when your session expires, and you should log in again explicitly to resolve them.
Mobile Device Management (MDM)
You can distribute the Confluence Data Center app to people in your organisation using your MDM solution. For more info on how to do this, see Mobile Device Management.
Marketplace apps, themes, and visual customizations
The mobile app provides a simple, lightweight way for users to view, create, edit and collaborate on pages. Complex interactions, including those provided by Marketplace apps, such as blueprints, calendars, workflows will not be available in the app. Some third party macros may be available, depending on whether the third-party app supports rendering these macros on mobile.
Any theming or look and feel customizations you've made to your site will not be reflected in the mobile app.
Cloud services
In order to provide push notifications to users' devices, we have developed a cloud-based notification service. This service is developed and maintained by Atlassian, and is hosted on our AWS infrastructure (AWS SNS). See Push notifications service below for more information.
This is the only cloud-based service used by the app.
Push notifications service
The Confluence Data Center mobile app can push notifications directly to users' devices. Users choose whether they'd like to receive push notifications from the app, and can opt out at any time. This feature uses a cloud-based notifications service developed and maintained by Atlassian and hosted on our AWS infrastructure. No user or message content is sent to the service, only notification IDs, and we don't store any data.
If you need to avoid using any cloud-based services you can choose to disable push notifications entirely. Head to Administration 
> General Configuration > Mobile apps.
If you're using restrictive firewall or proxy server settings, you'll need to allow (whitelist) https://mobile-server-push-notification.atlassian.com to ensure push notifications work as expected.
For sites that are not accessible on the public internet (for example users need to be connected via VPN to use the app) we adapt the push notification message as follows:
- If the user is connected to your network or VPN, we'll show the full notification, for example "Sara Leung shared 'End of year party' with you"
- If the user is not currently connected to your network or VPN, we'll show a shorter notification, for example "1 new notification".
Mobile web and linking directly to pages
It is not possible to go directly from a link, for example in an email notification, to the app. To help with this limitation, when people land on a Confluence page in their device's browser, they'll see the Open in app button. Tapping this prompt will open the app, if they have it installed, or take them to the App or Play store to download it.
If you don't want this button to display in mobile web, you'll need to disable the entire Confluence Mobile plugin, which is required to use the mobile app. There is currently a known issue with this workaround. See CONFSERVER-57423 - Getting issue details... STATUS for details.
Limitations and known issues
Not all macros are available
Not all macros will display in the app or mobile web. If a macro can't be displayed, you'll see the message below, and have the option to tap through to the desktop version of the page, in your device's browser.
Screenshot: Error that appears when a macro is not rendered in Confluence mobile
Administrators can disable Confluence mobile on your site
If you're not able to use the mobile app or mobile web, it may be because your administrator has disabled one or both of the following system apps:
- Mobile plugin for Confluence Data Center (formerly called Confluence mobile plugin). This is required to use the mobile app.
- Confluence mobile web plugin. This is required to use mobile web.
Disabling the Mobile plugin for Confluence Data Center (formerly known as 'Confluence Mobile Plugin') will also disable all the modules of the Workbox - Host Plugin plugin. This issue is being tracked at CONFSERVER-40782 - Getting issue details... STATUS
Seperate Cloud and Data Center mobile apps
While the functionality of the two mobile apps is very similar, you will need to download the Confluence Data Center and Server mobile app to be able to authenticate with a Data Center site. You can't use the Confluence Cloud app with a Confluence Data Center site or vice versa.
Troubleshooting
Having other problems with the app? See Confluence Server and Data Center mobile apps in the knowledge base.