This page describes Looker’s new dashboard experience. For information on editing legacy dashboards, visit the Editing legacy dashboards documentation page. To determine which type of dashboard you are using, compare the screenshots on the Viewing dashboards and Viewing legacy dashboards documentation pages.

To edit a dashboard, you must have:

• The Manage Access, Edit access level for the folder in which the dashboard resides
• The appropriate Looker permissions to edit the dashboard

Additionally, to edit a specific dashboard tile, you must have access to the model the tile is based on.

If you don’t have access to all the models that a particular dashboard’s tiles are based on, you can still edit other parts of the dashboard, such as the dashboard title, dashboard settings, dashboard filters (although you will not see filter suggestions for filters based on fields in a model you do not have access to), and tiles for which you do have model access.

When editing a dashboard, keep in mind best practices for dashboard construction. Find information and recommendations about building performant dashboards in the Considerations when building performant Looker dashboards Help Center article.

Entering edit mode in dashboards

Select Edit dashboard from the dashboard menu:

In edit mode, you can add, move, edit, or delete tiles or filters, or edit the dashboard title.

You can tell that you’re in edit mode by the blue toolbar at the top of the dashboard.

As you begin to make edits, the Save button appears. Click Save to save your edits and exit edit mode.

To discard edits, click Cancel. In the Discard changes? dialog box, click Discard to confirm that you want to cancel and exit edit mode. The Discard changes? dialog box also appears if you attempt to navigate away from the dashboard by clicking on the navigation breadcrumb or the forward or back arrows on your browser.

Rearranging and resizing tiles

In edit mode, you can move and resize tiles on a dashboard. Click and drag on the six-dot icon in the upper left of a tile to move it. When you drag a tile to a new location on the dashboard, blue grid lines appear to help you position the tile.

Click and drag on the bottom right corner of the tile to resize it.

If you want to resize a tile to be very short, hiding the tile title can help you make the tile as short as possible.

You can also use the Move tile option in the tile’s edit menu to move the tile to the top or the bottom of the dashboard.

Tile size and grid layout

When you add a visualization using grid layout to a dashboard, the grid arrangement can become responsive to the size of the dashboard tile.

For example, you have a dashboard tile with a visualization that uses a grid layout of four small charts. If you size the tile to be short and wide, the small charts appear as one row of four. If you size the tile as a square, the small charts reposition to two rows of two. If you size the tile to be narrow but tall, the charts reposition to four rows of one.

To ensure that the grid arrangement is responsive, do not enter a number into the visualization's Number of Charts per Row setting. If you enter a value into Number of Charts per Row, the dashboard tile respects that setting regardless of the size or shape of the dashboard tile.

Adding tiles

In edit mode, you can add tiles or text to your dashboard. See the Creating user-defined dashboards documentation page for information about how to add text and tiles.

Editing tiles

In edit mode, the three-dot menu at the top right of each tile shows edit options. These options differ slightly depending on whether you are viewing a query tile:

or a Look-linked tile:

Editing a query tile title

In edit mode, you can edit a query tile’s title by clicking on the tile and making your edits. Click Save at the upper right of the dashboard to save your changes.

You can also edit tile titles for both query tiles and Look-linked tiles when editing a tile’s underlying query or Look.

Editing a tile’s query or Look

If you save edits to a Look, it affects every dashboard (new or legacy) where that Look is used.

In edit mode, you can edit a tile’s underlying query or Look — including the title of the tile and the visualization — directly in the dashboard.

Click Edit in the tile’s three-dot menu.

If you are editing a Look, the edit pane displays the dashboards that contain tiles linked to that Look. Those dashboards will be affected by your changes. If you are editing a query tile, you will not see a list of dashboards affected in the edit pane, because your edits only affect the tile and dashboard you are in.

When you’re editing a dashboard tile that contains a funnel chart or a timeline chart, the charts look different on the dashboard tile than they do in the edit window. Additionally, map charts’ tooltips function differently when viewed on dashboard tiles. For more information, visit the funnel chart, timeline chart, and map chart documentation pages.

Hiding or showing a tile title

In edit mode, you can hide or show the title of a tile. By default, tile titles are shown. You can hide a title by clicking Hide title in the tile’s three-dot menu.

Oncce the title is hidden, the tile’s three-dot menu displays an option to show the title of the tile.

The hide/show option does not appear in the three-dot menu of text tiles or tiles that use single value visualizations. To hide or show the title of a single value visualization, click Edit in the tile’s three-dot menu, toggle the Show Title switch in the style menu, and save. To hide or show a title of a text tile, click Edit in the tile’s three-dot menu, remove or reinstate the tile title, and save.

Adding a tile note

In edit mode, click the Add note button in the tile’s three-dot menu:

Enter the note text and select display options:

1. Enter the note text to show on the tile. You can use plain text or HTML.
2. Select the location of the note. The options are above the visualization, below the visualization, or as hover text that appears when users hover over a circled i icon to the right of the tile title. For tiles containing single value visualizations that are sized to be 150 pixels tall or shorter, title notes render as hover text regardless of the location selected in this field.
3. Check this box to collapse the note by default. A collapsed note shows only the first line, with an ellipsis at the end of the line. Unchecking this box displays the note’s full text by default. If you select On icon hover under Display Location, you will not see this option.
4. Add the note to the tile, or cancel it.

The note appears on the tile with a collapse/expand arrow to the left of the note. Clicking that arrow or anywhere on the note toggles between collapsed and expanded displays.

Once you add a note to a tile, the tile’s three-dot menu changes to display Edit note instead of Add note. Click Edit note to edit or delete your note.

Moving a tile to the top or bottom of the dashboard

In edit mode, you can move a tile to the top or bottom of the dashboard.

The tile will remain in the column it’s currently located in. If the tile is already at the top or the bottom of the column, the option to move it to that spot is disabled.

Duplicating a query tile

In edit mode, you can duplicate query tiles by clicking Duplicate tile from the tile’s menu:

Looker creates a copy of the tile with the same query and visualization settings and adds the new tile to the bottom of the dashboard. From there, you can move or resize the tile, edit the tile title, or edit the new tile to adjust the visualization or the underlying query.

You cannot duplicate a Look-linked tile and will not see Duplicate tile in the three-dot menu of Look-linked tiles.

Deleting a tile

In edit mode, you can delete a tile from a dashboard. Select Delete (for a query tile) or Remove Look (for a Look-linked tile) from the tile’s three-dot menu. This deletion cannot be undone.

Deleting a Look-linked tile from a dashboard does not affect the underlying Look.

Editing dashboard settings

In edit mode, click Settings in the upper left of the blue toolbar:

A Settings window appears. Under the General tab, you can apply settings for time zone, Run on load, and autorefresh. Under the Filters tab, you can set the dashboard filter bar to default to either collapsed or expanded.

Time zone

This option is only available if your Looker admin has enabled the User Specific Time Zone setting.

Select the time zone in which your dashboard will be run. Dashboard viewers will be able to temporarily change the time zone setting when viewing the dashboard.

You can choose one of the following options:

• Each tile’s time zone to run all the tiles in the time zone in which they were saved
• Viewer time zone to run all tiles in each viewer’s time zone
• Select a specific time zone from list in the drop-down menu to run all the tiles in that time zone

Run on load

If Run on load is enabled, dashboard data automatically loads when the dashboard is first loaded.

If Run on load is disabled, the dashboard does not display any data until the reload data icon is clicked.

Autorefresh

It might make sense to automatically refresh the data on a regular schedule to ensure that it is up-to-date. You can set autorefresh frequencies for an entire dashboard or for individual tiles. Autorefresh never pulls results from the Looker cache; it always pulls the data from the database.

To set autorefresh for a dashboard and all its tiles:

1. Enable the Automatically refresh dashboard switch.
2. Select a refresh frequency to automatically update the dashboard and all its tiles.
3. To adjust the frequency for any individual tiles, do so in the Tile section, where each tile in the dashboard is listed. Click the drop-down for that tile in the Refresh frequency column, select Refresh every, and then set your frequency.
4. Click Save to save your changes.

To set autorefresh for individual tiles but not for the dashboard:

1. Disable the Automatically refresh dashboard switch (if previously enabled).
2. In the Refresh frequency column of the Tile section, click the drop-down for a tile to autorefresh.
3. Select Refresh every.
4. Set your frequency.
5. For any tiles you do not want to autorefresh, leave the setting as Does not refresh.
6. Click Save to save your changes.

The frequency settings accept whole numbers.

The autorefresh intervals begin at the time of day that you turn on this feature, and the dashboard refreshes on the interval you set as long as the dashboard is open in a browser tab and is not in edit mode. If the dashboard is closed or in edit mode during a scheduled refresh time, it won’t refresh. If the dashboard is closed or goes into edit mode, regardless of whether or not it is during a scheduled refresh time, the refresh interval restarts as soon as the dashboard is opened again or leaves edit mode.

For example, if it is 8:33 a.m. when you set a daily refresh, the dashboard will refresh the next day at 8:33 a.m. and then refresh again each following day at 8:33 a.m. However, if one day you enter edit mode at 9:02 a.m. and exit edit mode at 9:45 a.m., from then on, the daily refresh will occur at 9:45 a.m, beginning the following day.

The Clear cache and refresh and reload data options are independent of the autorefresh interval, meaning that manually refreshing the dashboard does not restart the autorefresh interval. For example, if a dashboard’s autorefresh interval is 1 hour, you can use the Clear cache and refresh option 40 minutes after an autorefresh and the dashboard will still autorefresh 20 minutes later (1 hour after it was last autorefreshed).

Similarly, autorefresh works regardless of whether Run on load is enabled or disabled. If Run on load is disabled and you open a dashboard with autorefresh settings, the refresh interval begins upon opening regardless of whether you click the reload data icon to load the data initially.

Autorefresh and performance

Frequent dashboard updates, especially on large dashboards, can place a significant strain on some database systems. You may want to discuss this consideration with your Looker admin. At a minimum, avoid setting a refresh interval that is shorter than your database update interval, as there would be no new data to refresh and this would trigger unnecessary queries.

Likewise, when multiple users access a dashboard with autorefresh, it may impede performance. To display your dashboard on a shared screen while multiple users simultaneously access it, you can create two identical dashboards and configure only the dashboard on the shared screen to refresh automatically.

Find more information and recommendations about building performant dashboards in the Considerations when building performant Looker dashboards Help Center article.

Default filters view

On the Filters tab of the Settings window, you can set the Default filters view option to:

• Expanded — The filter bar shows on page load and filters are shown by default.
• Collapsed — The filter bar does not show on page load and filters are hidden by default.

Click Save to save the change.

The Default filters view option defaults to Expanded. If you change the setting to Collapsed, you need to exit edit mode and then refresh the dashboard to see your change.

Dashboard viewers can temporarily change the filter bar back and forth between collapsed and expanded by clicking the filters icon. However, only the Default filters view setting permanently changes the default state of the filter bar.

Editing dashboard details

In edit mode, select Show dashboard details from the dashboard three-dot menu. The Description text box then becomes editable.

Once you are finished editing the description, click Save to save the change.

Deleting dashboards

If you have the Manage Access, Edit access level for a dashboard, you can delete it in one of two ways:

• You can delete one or more dashboards at a time from folders, as described on the Organizing and managing access to content documentation page.
• You can delete a single dashboard by selecting Move to trash from the dashboard’s three-dot menu.

Once you delete a dashboard, only a Looker admin can retrieve it from the trash.

Keyboard shortcuts when dashboards are in edit mode

To see the keyboard shortcuts you can use when editing dashboards, visit the Keyboard shortcuts in Looker documentation page.