When you are a small team, bringing your ideas to life – you will have emphatic focus on the development part. And more often than not, documentation will be an afterthought. That, is the nature of most software development teams.
But as your software product gets off the ground, you feel the need to be a bit more organised. Otherwise it will become near impossible to collaborate with your growing team.
That is when the customer feedback starts to flow in. Your colleagues from marketing & sales team are relaying the objections they heard. Your product roadmap is now taking up a nice shape. You start to iterate and build on what matters & peel off that doesn’t.
But when you look back, it is too difficult to see where you are coming from. Because the evolution of your software is not documented anywhere.
This is where changelogs (or change logs) come in. They act as a bridge between the current version of your software product & its past. When written effectively, this powerful tool can build credibility and confidence among your team members as well as customers. The importance of changelogs can be seen in open source solution that are developed by a group of developers all over the world.
Here is a brief article on how to write an effective changelog for your software product, be it open source or proprietary, along with some considerations and warnings.
What Is a Changelog?
A changelog is a concise and easy-to-read record of all changes to a product, such as new features, improvements, or bug fixes. Think of it as a timeline of how the product changes and enhances over time. It keeps your users, team members, and stakeholders informed about what’s new or changed.
Changelogs can be created manually or automatically by using Jira or Git-connected tools. Regular updates promote integrity and trust, making users feel confident and informed.
Even if you’ve heard the term “changelog” before and were unsure what it meant, you understand it now. It’s just a simple way to track a product’s progress over time. Leveraging a clear format ensures that everyone can see the most important updates without any confusion.
Overall, a changelog is your product’s improvement story—written down, shared, and simple to follow.
Different Types of Changelogs
Changelogs are formatted in various styles to appeal to different audiences, such as developers, users, and teams. Selecting the right format enhances communication across platforms, clarity, and engagement. The most successful changelog types are as follows:
- Public Changelogs: Shared with end users to announce new features, bug fixes, and enhancements in a simple and engaging format. It is perfect for boosting candor and user trust.
- Internal Changelogs: Keeps cross-functional teams in sync on product changes within organisations. It is particularly helpful for marketing teams, support, and QA teams.
- Developer Changelogs: It is for the engineers and open-source contributors who are the intended users of code-level changes, commits, pull requests, and other extremely technical logs.
- Semantic Changelogs: The structure is consistent, with tags such as “Added,” “Fixed,” “Changed,” and “Removed” for improved understanding and automation.
- Visual Changelogs: This changelog includes videos, GIFs, and screenshots to help make product updates more interesting and understandable.
- Customer-Facing Changelog: A polished, non-technical log that highlights new features, UI updates, and bug fixes and aims to increase communication and product engagement.
- In-App Changelog: Embedded directly into the app or product UI to notify users of changes in real time, thereby improving onboarding and feature discovery.
- Marketing Changelog: Styled with images, calls to action, and benefit-driven messaging, it is used in newsletters and social media to promote product adoption and announce updates.
Key Components of a Changelog
A structured changelog is more than just a list of updates. It helps to keep your team together, informs your users, and makes your progress visible. To make it truly effective, you can include these key components:
- Version Tracker: It gives each update a customised version number so that users know exactly what has changed and when.
- Release Radar: Add a release date to each update to create a clear timeline of your product’s progress.
- Update Highlights: Keep readers informed by providing a simple and jargon-free description of what’s new, improved, or fixed.
- Authored By: Mention the developer or team responsible for the change to increase attribution and give credit where it is due.
- Change Type Tags: Categorise the updates (e.g., “Bug Fix,” “New Feature,” “Improvement”) so that users can quickly find relevant information.
These five components are essential for a professional, informative, and easily navigable changelog.
Why Is Keeping a Changelog Important?
Keeping a changelog isn’t just a technical standard, it’s also an effective communication tool. A correct changelog ensures that your users, colleagues, and stakeholders are always aware of what’s going on, no matter how big or small the updates are. Here’s why it is important to keep a changelog:
- Boosts Transparency: A changelog fosters confidence by providing users with a clear understanding of what is changing and when.
- Drives Feature Awareness: New features are frequently overlooked. They will receive the attention if you highlight them in your changelog.
- Simplifies Support: Customer support teams can use the changelog to answer questions faster and troubleshoot more accurately.
- Encourages Adoption: When users understand the value and purpose of the changelog, they are more likely to interact with and explore updates.
- Creates a Product Story: Your changelog develops over time into a living document that shares how your product has grown and evolved.
- Improves Team Collaboration: A shared and consistent update history helps developers, marketers, and support teams stay connected.
Key Formats for Changelogs
Changelogs do not have to be restricted to a single standard format. How you present updates can affect how well they are understood and how users react. Depending on your audience and goal, the following are some of the most popular and effective formats:
Markdown (.md): Lightweight, version-controlled, and ideal for developers working in GitHub or GitLab repositories.
HTML / Web Page: Ideal for public changelogs, as it is easily styled, mobile-friendly, and searchable on Google.
PDF: Excellent for compliance audits, offline access, and formal documentation that must be shared and stored.
Email: It allows you to instantly alert internal teams or customers and ensures that important updates are not missed.
Confluence Page: Perfect for teams using Atlassian tools, as it provides a collaborative space that is simple to update and share.
Word / Google Docs: It is best for internal editing and reviews prior to publishing the final version.
JSON / XML: Structured data formats are used to automatically feed internal tools or integrate APIs.
In-app Notifications: Display updates directly within your product, ensuring that users see them in the right context.
Slide Deck / Presentation: It is useful for summarising significant changes during executive reviews or release meetings.
Leveraging the right format, or combining a few, helps you to communicate updates more effectively and keep your users informed.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the term “changelog” but aren’t quite sure what it is. Simply put, changelog is a documented record of all the changes that a software undergoes. Changes made are then chronologically recorded for users to easily spot the evolution of the product. Following a defined changelog format can help in tracking the changes made in a systematic way, and help contributors to identify notable changes easily.
Changelogs Vs Release Notes
Without a proper changelog example to refer to, users might confuse them with release notes. But they aren’t quite the same thing.
Release notes (read the complete release notes guide) are documents giving a wordy description about the release of a new version for a service or product. They usually contain detailed information about the changes made as well as their impact on the end users. They also include the bugs resolved, and in case of open source software – release notes can even serve as a user manual.
But, changelogs are terse & to the point. They are lists of additions, removals & changes to the software. They mean more for the team that develops the software than the customers. At times, they will also contain some technical details that are not relevant for the end users – like bug fix details.
In other words, release notes use more comprehensive language for explaining what has changed or hasn’t changed – and changelogs list notable changes made in a less verbose way & are more technical oriented: they can be generated with the help of a changelog tool, like release notes.
Where Should You Publish a Changelog?
Changelogs can have different styles and locations, but they’re a must on every project. They can be presented as blog posts, as a *.md file in a GitHub repository, in the changelog section of the software (or its website), in “What’s new” on the Android play and Apple app stores… As long as there is a clearly defined space for changelogs to exist (and that space is clearly known and easily accessible by stakeholders), it should be good.
Best Practices for Writing a Good Changelog
Here are some best practices to take your changelog from decent to outstanding, prepared uniquely but supported by expert advice:
- First, make sure it’s clear and concise. Use simple language, short bullet points, and characters like “Added,” “Fixed,” and “Changed” as category labels to help readers quickly identify relevant updates.
- Second, structure wisely. Put the entries in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent updates and always including version numbers and dates. A consistent format or style guide builds familiarity and trust.
- Third, segment by type. Divide changes into categories such as Security, Deprecated, and Removed. This allows users to filter updates by relevance.
- Fourth, provide context & credits. Add links to release notes, docs, or blog posts for more information, and highlight everyone who contributed to promote open discussion and community strength.
- Finally Fifth, maintain and automate. Use tools or changelog templates to expedite the process and schedule frequent updates. It guarantees an accurate and simple changelog structure.
Trust is built on a clear and accountable changelog structure that goes beyond just an update log.
How do you maintain a changelog?
Here are 4 tips to help you write an effective changelog.
1. Use Reverse Chronology
This is the most important one. Be sure that the latest versions are placed first. Consider that rarely your audience will be interested in looking at what happened years ago. It is always the latest changes that interest most of us.
Doing this will not only help your readers but also market the fact that you are constantly improving the product. That there is a steady paced development team supporting the software.
Here is a snapshot from Confluence cloud changelog.
2. Do Proper Formatting
Avoid long sentences and paragraphs. Keep your audience engaged by visual formatting.
This entails using headings, subheadings and bullets. This will make your changelog reader-friendly. Consider writing it down in markdown or markup. Carefully weave the content using italics, bold text and code fences if they’re required.
Breaking down the changelog into multiple visual parts is even more critical for projects with several components.
3. Grab Their Attention Early
Consider that most people are in a hurry these days, besides having a very short attention span.
Thus, highlight different types of changes with various visuals. Many teams rely on colored lozenges to achieve this. Different colors can be used to a different component, feature, types of changes or even pricing plans the changes impact. It could be anything, as long as it makes sense for your audience.
4. Provide Additional Details
While the changelogs are not verbose, they shouldn’t prevent a curious reader from knowing more.
Always provide links to detailed blog posts, videos etc. It is not uncommon to see a link ‘Know more’ at the bottom of an item in the changelog. Heck, even pointing the users to comprehensive release notes should be ok. As long as there is a history that can detail out the progression, it should work.
Some teams publish names of the developers who contributed to this change – Github has enough examples that feature names of those who have worked on various functions of open source software. Again, use the space creatively & make your changelog colorful.
Examples of Great Changelogs
A written changelog is a narrative tool as it helps to increase user engagement, promotes transparency, and develops trust. The best changelogs are simple to read, clearly laid out, and sometimes entertaining. Here are some notable examples that get it right:
Ahrefs’ Web-Based Changelog Page
A sleek, reverse-chronological page with friendly copy, screenshots, and links. Ideal for SEO-savvy users who need clarity quickly.
Slack’s App Store Changelog (iOS & Android)
Slack infuses even minor bug fixes with wit, humanity, and humor. It changes them into interesting, personality-rich updates that users actually enjoy reading.
Notion’s In-App Changelog Feed
Clean design, bold section headers, and bite-sized entries make updates easy to digest right in the workplace.
Linear’s Developer-Focused Web Changelog
Combines a structured roadmap and a changelog in a fast, keyboard-friendly interface intended for advanced users.
Figma’s In-App Update Tooltips
Clear tooltips and updated cards inside the editor make it easier to introduce new features without interrupting your design work.
Intercom’s Blog-Style Product Updates Page
Intercom’s changelog is full of context, images, and real-world use cases, making it read like a product evolution story.
Beamer’s Widget-Based In-App Changelog
A floating in-app widget provides brief updates while preserving the user experience. It’s perfect for real-time visibility.
Tools for Creating a Changelog
A changelog should not feel like a chore; it should be easy to create, organised, and shareable. There are effective tools available to simplify the process while keeping your users informed and engaged. Here are some changelog tools you should look into:
- GitHub + auto-changelog: This combination is perfect for developers because it automatically collects changelogs from commit history. It ensures that things run quickly and are version controlled.
- Automated Release Notes & Reports app for Jira– Easily generate release notes in multiple formats like PDF, Word, Confluence, and Email—solving pain points across creation, formatting, and distribution.
- Headway: It allows you to create beautiful and branded changelogs with scheduling options and embeddable widgets.
- Changelogfy: A powerful tool made specifically for SaaS teams, including a markdown editor, feedback collection, and changelog automation.
- AnnounceKit: Visual elements can be used to announce releases on multiple channels. Segment your announcements based on user groups.
- Canny: Changelogs, product updates, and feedback tracking are all combined in one place, resulting in a complete user communication hub.
These tools will guide you in turning changelogs into an advanced version of your product’s story.
What is a good changelog?
Creating good changelogs is not difficult, but it isn’t easy either. Here are a few pointers that can help in making a changelog better:
- Always include a complete history of notable changes. This lets your changelog serve as a historical reference. Don’t make the mistake of assuming the changelog is just being used for the latest updates.
- Include the “when” for each of the updates. This is helpful if a bug should be found several months following an update being installed.
- Be sure to note anything that was changed, added, removed, fixed or deprecated as well as any breaking changes.
- Never assume anything, such as users knowing about the name of a module.
- Add sufficient white space so that your changelog doesn’t look busy.
- Include a summary—This makes your changelog much easier to understand and takes minimal effort.
- Group changes of the same type together while setting the changelog format. This makes the changelog more readable and organized.
- Use one-word categories for describing the kind of changes made.
- Don’t forget to update deprecations—You need to inform your users if your project’s latest version includes breaking changes. Also, be sure to list any removals.
- Don’t use a commit log diff as a changelog.
Conclusion
A lively and good changelog is your product’s hype reel that builds trust, sparks conversation, and reminds users that progress never stops.
If you’re hustling in a garage or running a company, documenting every tweak and triumph keeps everyone on track and excited about what comes next. If you nail the format, use the right tools, and speak in a voice that feels human, every release will be an opportunity to delight.
So, supercharge your productivity with the Automated Release Notes & Reports app for Jira, which creates, formats, and publishes updates at the rate of innovation.
Give it a try now and let the story of your product shine!
FAQs
1. What’s the difference between a changelog and version history?
A changelog gives key product updates, bug fixes, and new features in an easy-to-read format, usually directed at end users or stakeholders. The version history is a detailed and technical record of all changes, including internal edits. While both track progress, changelogs are more concise and readable for general communication.
2. How often should I update my changelog?
Your changelog should be updated with each product release, whether it’s a major update, minor improvement, or bug fix. Regular changelog updates keep users informed of changes, promote transparency, and increase user trust. Changelog tools help to maintain quality and reduce the effort required for manual updates.
3. Can changelogs be automated?
Yes, changelogs can be automated with specialised tools that work with project management systems such as Jira or Git. Automated changelogs simplify release note creation by importing updates directly from issue trackers, reducing manual effort and improving accuracy. It ensures that product changes are communicated to stakeholders on schedule.
4. Why do we use a changelog & What is its purpose?
The changelog is a documented record of all the changes that software undergoes. Changes made are then chronologically recorded for users to spot the evolution of the product easily. Following a defined changelog format can help in tracking the changes made in a systematic way, and help contributors to identify notable changes easily.
5. Where do you put changelog?
Changelogs can have different styles and locations, but they’re a must on every project. They can be presented as blog posts, as a *.md file in a GitHub repository, in the changelog section of the software (or its website), in “What’s new” on the Android Play and Apple app stores…
6. How do you maintain a changelog?
Use Reverse Chronology- Be sure that the latest versions are placed first.
Do Proper Formatting- Avoid long sentences and paragraphs. Keep your audience engaged by visual formatting
Grab Their Attention Early- Consider that most people are in a hurry these days, besides having a very short attention span.
Provide Additional Details- Always provide links to detailed blog posts, videos, etc.
