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Hi everyone,

I want to bring attention to a much-needed improvement for the record picker in Interface forms, as originally discussed in this post.

Right now, the record picker only shows the primary field, which makes it very difficult to select the correct record when there are similar names. For example, in my school’s internal system, we manage students, courses, homework, and exams. When enrolling students or linking to assignments, we often see multiple records with identical or unclear names—and no way to differentiate them.

A simple solution would be the ability to show additional fields (e.g., date, type, ID, or status) in the dropdown menu. This seems like a small change but would greatly improve usability across many use cases.

I know Airtable is doing great work with AI and advanced features, which I really appreciate—but I hope the team doesn’t overlook these core UX needs that impact day-to-day use. For some of us, this is genuinely a deal breaker.

If you agree, please upvote or comment below so the Airtable team sees that this is important to many users. Let’s help make this happen!

Thank you 🙌

Hey ​@JGO, for feature requests you’ll want to fill out this Product Idea form! 

Great point, I definitely see where you’re coming from. When records have similar or unclear names, the record picker in Interface forms can be tough to work with.

 

That said, even though the card layout gives a bit more context, it doesn’t really solve the core issue since only the primary field is searchable. So if a user can’t identify the right record from the name alone, they’re stuck scrolling or guessing, which isn’t ideal in more complex bases.

 

In my experience, a better approach is using dynamic filters on linked record fields. These work well in Interface forms when set at the field level in the base. For example, you can have the user first select a course, and then only show assignments tied to that course. This type of conditional filtering makes the experience much smoother and reduces confusion when dealing with lots of similar records.

 

Another workaround that helps in the meantime is using a formula as the primary field. You can concatenate key fields like name, ID, date, or status to give more context in a single, searchable line. It’s not perfect, but it does improve the usability of the record picker with the current limitations.

 

I also want to echo your broader point, Airtable’s core UX still needs more flexibility and customization, especially within Interfaces. While it’s exciting to see new developments in AI, I hope the product team continues to invest in foundational UX improvements as well. There are plenty of cases where the current limitations push users toward custom front-end solutions just to get the design or workflow they need. With a bit more flexibility in the native Interface builder, many of those workarounds wouldn’t be necessary.

 

I’m also really excited about the new custom Interface extensions currently in alpha, which allow developers to create custom React components inside Interfaces. This has huge potential to solve many of the issues we’re discussing, but only for those with coding skills. For the broader no-code community, the core limitations still remain. It’s a big step forward, but not quite the full solution yet.

 

Upvoted, and really appreciate you starting this conversation.

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