Airtable Apps are now Airtable Extensions

[Jordan_Scott1]

Hi all - I hope everyone is having a great week! 💫

Some may remember, that back in 2018, Airtable released “Blocks”— which let you build your own tools and added additional functionality to Airtable.

Then, in 2020, Airtable released the Apps Marketplace, which added even more functionality, and led to the renaming of blocks to apps because, well, they’re applications that work within Airtable. But that was never as clear as we hoped, especially in an era where Apps can refer to everything from Miro to Angry Birds to the application your team builds with Airtable.

So as we look forward, we wanted to choose a name that reflects the way our customers can—and will—use these powerful tools. Our goal is to extend the functionality of Airtable, so we wanted to choose a name that reflects that future. “Extensions” was a natural choice.

The Future of Extensions

Extensions will retain all their same, great functionality. In the future we’re building toward, Extensions won’t just be something you add to your base. They’ll be a way to enhance your views, interfaces, and more. We’re working toward a future in which developers can build and share custom extensions across any major surface in Airtable.

Of course, this is a future that’s going to take some time to build, but this name change is our first important step. Starting today, all your former apps will now be called “extensions” when you log in to Airtable. If you’re currently using Apps, rest assured they’ll still function the same as before and if you run into issues for any reason, please don’t hesitate to contact Airtable Support.

And on that note, we want to thank all the developers and Airtable experts who have already built on our platform and whose apps are used by thousands of creators—like On2Air’s backups app, Knowa’s heat map app, and so many more. You inspire the Airtable team every day, and we can’t wait to see what you’ll build next!

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or feedback, and if you haven’t used extensions yet, now’s the perfect time to dive in. Here’s a quick guide to getting started with extensions.

This change will take place today for all plan types, if you aren’t seeing updates reflected, please try to clear your cache.

[ScottWorld]

Great name change. Finally a name that makes sense! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: :raised_hands:

[ScottWorld]

@Jordan_Scott1 Can we hope that extensions will be able to be automated in the future? For example, automating Page Designer?

[Rupert_Hoffsch1]

I don’t care much about names, but potentially being able to build extensions for every major “surface in Airtable” is probably the best thing I’ve heard all week :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: :raised_hands: :sparkler: I’m very much in favour of opening up the platform and making it more customizable across the board, especially when it comes to the UI of things (views, interfaces, reading / writing rights, …).

[Karlstens]

Yah, enough is enough with Page Designer. I’m really, really keen on seeing some development with the Page Designer Extension asap, in particular:

• Support for Multi-Page Document
• Ability to print Grid/List of one record (such as printing a sheet of identical business cards to A4, then guillotining them after print)
• Dynamic grid points that shrink and grow with the changing Airtable data, so that one Page Designer Entry can show 10 record list, and the next say 20 records, without the user having to manually adjust the element height (an example here is a monthly invoice with variable billing records from month to month)
• The ability for elements to snap to other dynamic elements, so that when an element shrinks/grows, the attached elements move accordingly. Dynamic elements must also be able to snap with other dynamic elements.
• The ability to automate PDF creation on request or via Time automation that saves the PDF back into the record attachment being printed.
• That other extensions can also be automated, such as Barcode generation, so a barcode can be generated then Page Designer updated with that Barcode, and finally Page Designer Extension printed to PDF and saved back into the record attachment field.

I can’t imagine the amount of manufacturers who would drop their legacy Label and Document printing software in a heart-beat were AirTable Page Designer Extensions able to carryout the above.

[kuovonne]

Jordan_Scott1:

In the future we’re building toward, Extensions won’t just be something you add to your base. They’ll be a way to enhance your views, interfaces, and more. We’re working toward a future in which developers can build and share custom extensions across any major surface in Airtable.

Really looking forward to this. The ability to run extensions in interfaces, especially scripts, will be a game changer for me and interfaces.

[Hendrik_Yang]

Couldn’t agree more @Karlstens !

@Jordan_Scott1,
I hope with name change, you can also make it easier for people to build extensions on top of Airtable platform or maybe organise some hackathons like this.

[Jean_Francois_B]

Karlstens:

The ability to automate PDF creation on request or via Time automation that saves the PDF back into the record attachment being printed.

This should have been implemented years ago.

[Jordan_Scott1]

We do hope to make extensions as powerful as possible in the future, so this is a great suggestion I’ll make sure to flag to the team!

[Hannah_Wiginton]

Sounds great! Look forward for what else is to come.

[njg]

How can I "share custom extensions"? I understand this is in beta and I contacted support. When will this be available? I have a google map extension. Some websites are using it but I don't see that option in my google map extension.