How to remove the "Start typing to get a list of possible matches or press down to select" label from all fields
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 information in this page relates to customizations in Jira. Consequently, Atlassian Support cannot guarantee to provide any support for the steps described on this page as customizations are not covered under Atlassian Support Offerings. Please be aware that this material is provided for your information only and that you use it at your own risk.
Also, please be aware that customizations done by directly modifying files are not included in the upgrade process. These modifications will need to be reapplied manually on the upgraded instance.
Problem
For many fields in JIRA there is a default description as a help text with the phrase "Start typing to get a list of possible matches or press down to select". This message will always be above the description added by the user
Diagnosis
This message is hard-coded in JIRA and cannot be removed by the user in the UI
Workaround
As a workaround, you can modify some files in the JIRA install directory to have this message removed for all fields. Notice that this specific message will not appear anymore for any field in JIRA.
Proceed as follow:
These changes do not persist through an upgrade. If an upgrade on JIRA is performed, these changes will need to be re-applied.
- Locate the file:
<JIRA-INSTALL>/atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/jira/web/action/JiraWebActionSupport.properties Open the file on a text editor and locate the lines
# Generic
generic.picker.static.desc = Start typing to get a list of possible matches or press down to select.Modify the lines to the follow
# Generic
generic.picker.static.desc =- Restart your JIRA instance for the changes to take effect