When you enable file attachments, you allow users to attach files and screenshots to JIRA issues. This requires space on the server to save the attachments into. Note that attachments are not stored in JIRA's database and so will need to be backed up separately.

Configuring file attachments takes two steps:

  1. Enabling attachments.
  2. Granting the 'Create Attachments' permission to appropriate users.

Additionally, if you wish to allow users to attach a file when creating a new issue, you need to ensure that the 'Attachment' field is not hidden within the field configuration(s) associated with the specific issue type(s).

Step 1: Enabling attachments

  1. Log in as a user with the 'JIRA System Administrators' global permission.
  2. Bring up the administration page by clicking either the 'Administration' link on the top bar or the title of the Administration box on the dashboard.
  3. Under the 'Global Settings' sub-menu in the left-hand navigation column, click the 'Attachments' link. This will display the 'Attachment Settings' page, which states whether attachments are on or off:

    Before continuing — If you see the following message at the top of the page,

    Changing the attachment, index, backup or restore settings is not allowed for security reasons. You must edit jira-application.properties and explicitly set 'jira.paths.set.allowed=true'. Restart JIRA and then the path settings will be able to be changed.

    then you must first configure your JIRA installation to permit modification to its file path settings, or you will not be able to edit JIRA's file attachment settings.

    To configure your JIRA installation to permit modification to its file path settings,

    1. Follow the procedure for Enabling Modification to JIRA's File Path Settings, which requires JIRA to be shut down and restarted.
    2. Restart this particular procedure from step 1 (above).
  4. Click the 'Edit Configuration' link. The page will display in editable mode:

  5. In the 'Attachment Path' field, type the absolute path to the directory where attachments will be stored. By default, your attachments are located in your JIRA home directory under the data/attachments sub-directory.


    If you are running a large instance of JIRA, you may wish to consider moving your attachments from the default directory under JIRA home to another machine. The directory which stores your attachments may need to hold a considerable amount of data. Hence, it may be more efficient for you to host the attachments on a separate network drive.

    If you change your attachments directory, please ensure that it is given appropriate security, as described in Security Overview.

  6. In the 'Attachment Size' field, specify the maximum attachment size. The default is 10485760 bytes (10 MB).
  7. (Optional) In the 'Enable Thumbnails' field, select 'ON' if you wish to enable image attachments to be displayed as thumbnails. For details please see ' Image attachment thumbnails '.
  8. Click the 'Update' button.

Step 2: Granting the 'Create Attachments' permission to users

You now need to grant the 'Create Attachments' permission to appropriate users in the permission scheme(s) of project(s) for which you wish to allow attachments.

  1. Log in as a user with the 'JIRA Administrators' global permission.
  2. Bring up the administration page by clicking either the 'Administration' link on the top bar or the title of the Administration box on the dashboard.
  3. Under the 'Schemes' sub-menu in the left-hand navigation column, click the 'Permission Schemes' link. This will display a list of all permision schemes in your JIRA system, and the projects which use each scheme.
  4. For each relevant permission scheme,
    1. Click the 'Permissions' link to edit the scheme.
    2. In the 'Permissions' drop-down list, find 'Create Attachments', and click the 'Add' link.
    3. In the 'User-Group' drop-down list, select the relevant group. Then click the 'Add' button.

Specifying the maximum attachments per issue

JIRA allows multiple files to be attached to an issue in one operation. From the 'Attach File' page, the user can toggle between multiple and single attachment screens by selecting the 'Attach multiple' files link. The attachment form will retain the multiple/single attachment preference for that specific user for the duration of the user's session or until manually changed.

The number of attachment 'boxes' to be displayed on the multiple attachment screen is set to 3 by default. To change this, edit jira.attachment.number in the jira-application.properties file, then restart JIRA. For details, please see ' Advanced JIRA configuration with jira-application.properties '.