Core How-Tos
Use Jira Notes & Guidance
Jira Notes & Guidance is a floating pad that sits on every Jira page — board, backlog, an issue, your dashboard — and holds the same notes wherever you are. Park something in standup and it's still there afterwards. It's also the pad the Page Guide and Your access attach to.
Where it lives
The pad is on by default and starts collapsed to a slim header. Click the chevron — or the Jira Notes & Guidance title itself — to expand it, and click again to collapse.
It follows you around Jira rather than belonging to one board, so navigating from the board to an issue to your dashboard keeps the same pad and the same notes in front of you.
Take a note
Click into the pad and type. There's no save step — notes are stored as you write. The editor is rich text, with buttons for Bold, Italic, Heading, Bullet list, Link and Divider.
Notes are saved to your browser profile's sync storage, so they follow you across tabs and across the machines you're signed into.
The header buttons
- Zoom out / zoom in — resize the whole pad on the spot, without a trip to settings. Useful when the room can't read it from the back.
- Download — export your notes as a dated Markdown file.
- Bin — clear the notes. If there's anything to lose, it asks first.
- Sun / moon — flip between your chosen light and dark themes. See Choose a theme.
- Gear — open the settings page.
Park it anywhere
Pick one of six dock positions in Settings → Jira Notes & Guidance → Position — top or bottom, paired with left, center or right. A docked pad sits flush against the edge of the window rather than floating just inside it, so it takes as little of the board as it can.
Or just drag the pad by its header to any exact spot. A drag overrides the dock until you pick a position again, and the pad can go right up to an edge but never off screen. It remembers the editor size you dragged it to, and keeps its width when collapsed so it doesn't jump around. Anything attached below it — the Page Guide, Your access — travels with it.
Text size
Settings → Appearance → Text size steps the whole pad from 80% to 250% — header, notes and anything attached below together, so nothing drifts out of proportion. This is separate from Subtask text size, which handles the lists on Jira's own cards.
Turning it off
If you'd rather not have the pad on your Jira pages, switch off Show Jira Notes under Settings → Jira Notes & Guidance. Your notes are kept — turn it back on and everything reappears exactly as you left it. The change applies to open Jira tabs right away.
Related guides
- Show the Page Guide — attach page-aware practice notes to the bottom of the pad.
- See your access in a project — the permissions you hold, and who to ask.
- Back up & restore your settings — an export includes your notes, and a reset never clears them.
- Choose a theme — the colors the pad and the other floating panels use.