Grafana 9.5: What's New, Release History & Support Lifecycle

What Is New in Grafana 9.5

How does the new navigation in Grafana 9.5 improve workflow?

The redesigned navigation groups related tools, adds a command palette, breadcrumbs, and a global search header, making it faster to find and switch between pages.

• Menu now clusters observability, alerting, and data-source sections for intuitive access.
• Command palette (Ctrl+K / Cmd+K) lets you create dashboards, open apps, or jump to any page without leaving the keyboard.
• Breadcrumbs and a persistent sidebar give you context and one-click back navigation.
• The new header appears on every page, providing instant search across dashboards, alerts, and plugins.

What are the major Alerting enhancements in Grafana 9.5?

Grafana 9.5 adds multi-datasource rule search, fuzzy search, direct navigation between alerts and dashboards, preview of recording-rule queries, and refined no-data alert behavior, plus an upgraded notification policies view.

• Search alert rules across all data sources from a single list.
• Fuzzy search tolerates typos when filtering by namespace, folder, or rule name.
• Click a panel or dashboard to jump straight to its associated alert rule, and vice-versa.
• When editing a recording rule, a preview pane shows query results before you save.
• No-data alerts now wait for the full "For" duration before firing, reducing noise.
• Notification policies view now shows default and nested policies, mute timings, alert instances, and contact-point mappings in a single screen.

How can I query large Prometheus datasets more efficiently in Grafana 9.5?

The experimental Prometheus metric encyclopedia and browser-cache toggle let you fuzzy-search, filter, and cache metric metadata, dramatically reducing latency for high-cardinality environments.

Enable the features in grafana.ini:

[feature_toggles]
prometheusMetricEncyclopedia = true
prometheusResourceBrowserCache = true

After a restart you'll see a searchable, paginated metric list with type filters, regex backend search, and cached API responses for faster editor performance.

Why are API keys being removed from the UI in Grafana 9.5?

Grafana 9.5 removes the UI button for creating API keys to push teams toward service accounts, aligning with the long-term sunsetting plan for API keys.

• Existing keys continue to work, but new keys must be generated via the HTTP API.
• Service accounts provide granular role-based access and easier rotation.
• Migration guidance is available in the Sunsetting API keys GitHub issue.

What deprecations should I prepare for when upgrading to Grafana 9.5?

Angular-based panels are deprecated, the InfluxDB database provisioning field is deprecated, and the API key creation UI is removed, all of which will be removed in future releases.

• Angular panels (e.g., legacy Graph, Worldmap) will continue to render but will not receive UI updates and will disappear in Grafana 10.
• InfluxDB provisioning now stores the database name in jsonData.dbName; update your provisioning files accordingly.
• Switch to service accounts for programmatic access to avoid loss of functionality when the API key UI is finally retired.