This documentation is intended for Confluence developers who want to ensure that their existing plugins and apps are compatible with Confluence 8.9

Watch this page to find out when a new milestone is available and what’s changed. We will publish formal release notes once we release a beta.

Latest milestones

Issues with this milestone?

Hit the Feedback button on the Confluence EAP header or raise an issue to tell us about it.

Planned changes

In this section we'll provide an overview of the changes we intend to make, so you can start thinking how it might impact your app. We'll indicate when a change has been implemented, and in which milestone. 

New REST APIs

Status: DELAYED

We are introducing additional REST APIs to help admins automate and script administrative tasks in bulk. We'll confirm the API functionality shortly.

As new APIs are introduced, they'll be added to the REST API documentation.

New version of pocketknife-dynamic-modules

Status: DONE

We've released two new versions of pocketknife-dynamic-modules — version 1.1.1, which is compatible with older and newer versions of Confluence, and version 2.0.0, which is compatible with Confluence 8.8 and 8.9 only. Make sure you upgrade your apps to include one of these latest versions to keep them working.

Updated editor color palettes

Status: DONE

In preparation for the release of dark theme, we’ve updated the text color and table cell background color palettes to use design tokens. These updated palettes now use colors that also improve accessibility contrast.

As a result of this change, once dark theme is released in the coming months, all colors in the editor will be converted to match the updated color palettes. That means you will no longer be able to customize these palettes using the temporary workaround.

New editor XSRF token requirements

Status: DONE

A number of common endpoints used to create and edit pages/blogposts will now require XSRF tokens to be passed when called. If your plugin interacts or integrates with the Confluence editor in any way, please ensure you are passing an XSRF token when calling or redirecting to such endpoints. If not, you may encounter a 403 response.

Confluence 9.0 shipping with Platform 7

Status: ADVANCE NOTICE

Confluence 9.0 will include an upgrade to Atlassian Platform 7. This upgrade puts us in a better position to respond to security changes with reduced disruption and breaking changes for your apps.

We will:

• Upgrade numerous Atlassian and third-party components to benefit from the latest security patches and bug fixes

• Remove ‘Gray APIs’ (unsupported third-party and cross-product libraries with dependencies

• Rearchitect Atlassian REST APIs (Jackson/Jersey updated, and updated JAX-RS to v2)

• Reduce public APIs in Atlassian apps, WRM, and web fragments

As described earlier on this page, some new REST APIs are already available, and you’ll find information on the other projects below.

Proactively migrating away from code that is marked as deprecated will ensure a smoother upgrade to Confluence 9.0.

Read more about how to prepare for the Platform 7 upgrade here.

Jackson and Jersey v1 removal in 9.0

Status: DONE

As part of ongoing platform work leading us towards Confluence 9.0, Jackson and Jersey v1 will be marked as deprecated in 8.9 with replacements via Jackson and Jersey v2 in 9.0.

We will continue to export Jackson Annotations (Jackson 2.x). The remainder of Jackson libraries will be removed as part of Confluence 9.0.

Dark theme for Confluence

Status: ADVANCE NOTICE

Dark theme for Confluence development is continuing, and back in January, we published details about it on our community forum page (Dark theme EAP in Confluence Data Center). You can enable dark theme using the theme.switcher dark feature to begin testing your apps. 

For all the latest updates, check our guide on preparing your Data Center app for dark theme.

OpenSearch opt-in feature for Confluence

Status: IN PROGRESS

A reminder that we’re working to introduce OpenSearch engine as an opt-in feature in a future Confluence Data Center release. This will provide more advanced indexing options leading to less processing requirements. While we work on this change, make sure you keep checking the OpenSearch upgrade guide for updates and any deprecation information to ensure a smooth transition.

Removal of Gray APIs

Status: ADVANCE NOTICE

In Confluence 9.0, we plan to remove the ability for plugins to load many third-party libraries (also known as Gray APIs). This upgrade will allow us to improve Confluence more frequently without breaking your app or requiring you to do significant testing and rework when things change.

From Confluence 8.7 to 8.9, these third-party libraries as well as a number of Atlassian-specific libraries will no longer be exposed as transitive Maven dependencies of the main confluence artefact. To compensate for this, plugins will need to explicitly declare those dependencies by bundling them.

Note that before Confluence 9.0, there will be no runtime changes affecting the availabilities of these libraries and binary compatibility will be maintained. The changes in Confluence 8.7 through to 8.9 are only built-time changes and will pave the way for runtime removals in Confluence 9.0.

To learn more about this change and get your apps ready, refer to the Gray API developer guide.

Implemented changes

In this section we'll provide details of changes we have implemented, organised by the milestone they are first available in. This will help you decide which milestone to use when testing.

RC 1 –  25 March 2024

Milestone 8.9.0-rc1

Contains:

• Minor bug fixes

Beta –  19 March 2024

Milestone 8.9.0-beta2

Contains:

• Minor bug fixes

EAP 3 –  11 March 2024

Milestone 8.9.0-m50

Contains:

• pocketknife-dynamic-modules — versions 1.1.1 and 2.0.0
• Minor bug fixes

EAP 2 –  4 March 2024

Milestone 8.9.0-m50

Contains:

• Minor bug fixes

EAP 1 –  26 February 2024

Milestone 8.9.0-m43

Contains:

• More new REST APIs
• Updated color palettes
• Changes to how endpoints should be called for Confluence editor

Removed:

• PostgreSQL 12

Deprecated:

• Jackson v1
• Jersey v1