In a recent update, when you click on links to other Asana tasks within a task, it now opens that task in fullscreen rather than in the collapsed view. I find this quite unnecessary and would love an option to choose how tasks are displayed when clicking through to them (either by external link or internally linked in Asana).
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100% agree. The new update makes Asana so much more frustrating to use.
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That change in Asana makes linked tasks open in fullscreen by default, which can feel disruptive—currently there’s no option to toggle back to the compact view, so unless Asana adds a setting, users are stuck with fullscreen when clicking through.
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I have a thread about this as well, very frustrating and disruptive, my current workaround is to right-click and open the task in a separate window so I don’t have to keep hitting my back button
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new update - received a reply that this is a feature, and “it is working as intended”, however, I am right-clicking and opening in new windows like I was yesterday, and today I find this feature isn’t active on one of the boards, just the other. So I can click on tasks on this board (at least right this minute), and they’re back to normal. Click on the other, and it opens the whole task.
Recently it seems Asana has updated to force all tasks to the “New Tab” view by default when you click on them. The first image is how things used to look, second is how they look now whenever you click on a task in list view.
This really reduces a ton of user control and makes my workflow more difficult, as most of the screen is just blank space now instead of things for me to click on and reference. The lack of an apparent option to change this back is also frustrating. I know I can just click the arrows on the top right to fix the issue, but this shouldn’t be the default in the first place.
Is there perhaps an option I’m missing that would revert this back to the detailed view? Maybe I’m missing something obvious, any help is appreciated. Thank you!
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Welcome, @Benjamin_Bliss,
I’ve merged your post into an existing topic where you can click the title to scroll to the top and vote by clicking the Vote button at the top-left.
Thanks,
Larry
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Completely agree, it is not intuitive to reduce visible information when clicking on a task and losing the search function when selected. This requires an extra click per task, which over hundreds of tasks, lowers efficiency. I am specifically curious why this change was made in the first place and what the reasoning was. Perhaps Iren_Vilaniso can provide more information.
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I would highly appreciate an option to get back the compact view when clicking on linked tasks. The new mode is strongly affecting my way of working in a negative way.
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Agreed, same here. Having to right-click to open a task then close it is ridiculous. And the fact that it doesn’t happen on some of the tasks (but not all on the same project) means this cannot be a new feature, it has to be a bug.
And the fact that it’s been happening for over a week with no response other than “the feature is working like it’s supposed to, please vote!” is also negatively affecting my view of Asana’s overall functionality.
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Could we get this “feature” reversed, please? It is significantly slowing down production.
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Hi, @Benjamin_Bliss
I’m not sure if this will be helpful, but pressing the “Esc” key seems to exit fullscreen mode. However, it doesn’t return you to the previous view.
To return to the previous view, you need to use “Alt-←”.
That worked, thank you so much.
Now if Asana would like to explain why they created a feature that seems to have been made deliberately to slow down production so much that a forum leader had to post a workaround, I’d love to hear it.
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Coming back to note that since I pressed Esc once, just once, no tasks have opened in fullscreen. It seems to be a feature that they turned on for everyone that can be turned off with just that simple click (odd that no Asana member could explain that in the last week).
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I suspect this functional change is related to various other specification adjustments.
Since tasks are inherently multi-homed—meaning they belong to multiple projects—the detailed view already had to display a significant amount of project information.
With the recent addition of custom fields to the project attribute display, they likely prioritized a full-screen view to ensure users could see all that extra information when clicking on a task from the search results.
Come to think of it, modern multi-function mouse seem to have “Back” buttons and the like, so going back to the previous screen might actually be quite easy. Personally, though, I only use a simple mouse with just left and right buttons and a scroll wheel.
It’s a feature that no one wanted or needed, is functionally useless, and slows productivity. And the fact that we’re still commenting on this (and it’s still a problem) completely blows my mind. Are all Asana support staff just AI agents who can’t actually affect change?
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This change to full-screen tasks by default is driving our whole team crazy!
Please make task open behaviour a preference, or roll it back. Every single person on our team thought it was a bug.
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For over a week, I’ve assumed this has been a bug and had to come looking to find out that it’s a “feature”, a terrible one.
This is a weird behaviour choice, and it shouldn’t have been turned on by default. Give us a way to toggle it off
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Please roll this back, its frustrating and completely unnecessary, I am in agreement with every post on this thread
since a recent asana update, clicking on a task in the search bar will load into a whole window rather than having a side window on the right side overlay the current main page. the main issue is that new window doesn’t have a search bar, just the task information, so now i need to click the back button (or use ctrl+left arrow, but it’s still another step) before searching the next task.
i use asana to help me categorize tasks/task info/etc into a spreadsheet as backup data for the company. before i could search new tasks quickly and easily, but now i need to navigate multiple pages, slowing down my work flow significantly. is there a way to go back to the old system where it only opened an overlay window rather than a whole new one? if not, that is a very frustrating development.
thanks for reading,
UCLLC