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Liceo_Statale_D
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Is it possible to make a search box appear also in the “grid view” on mobile (as happens in the desktop version)?Schermata 2020-08-22 alle 16.44.02

5 Replies 5
M_k
11 - Venus
11 - Venus

Hi @Liceo_Statale_De_San

Yes, the search option is available for both the iPod Touch (similar to the iPhone, except no phone option) and the iPad. This is for non embedded bases.

Take a look at this thread, you might find something something usefull:

Hope this helps.

Mary

Here are screenshots of both iPod Touch and iPad.

image

image

Yes, as @M_k mentioned, and for those reading along at home: @Liceo_Statale_De_San is referring to embedding an Airtable view in another website on a mobile device using a mobile web browser.

For some inexplicable & strange reason, Airtable has completely overlooked including a toolbar with the mobile version of their embedded views.

What this means is that you end up with no searching, no sorting, and no grouping functionality in an embedded view on a mobile device. This makes absolutely ZERO sense, since the majority of Internet traffic comes from mobile devices.

I suppose this only makes sense when you view it in the context of MOST of Airtable’s technical decisions not making much sense. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

The ONLY way to solve this is to request the desktop version of the website.

I don’t know how to do this on Android, but on iOS, you can click on the little “aA” icon on the lefthand side of Safari’s toolbar, and choose “Request Desktop Website”.

That will tell Airtable that you’re using a desktop browser instead of a mobile browser.

iOS also lets you request the desktop website AUTOMATICALLY for whatever site you’d like.

Tap on that little “aA” icon again, and choose “Website Settings”. Then, you can set it to always request the desktop website for that site.

I love Airtable more than anyone, but this is one of my biggest pet peeves about Airtable: it feels like many of the features that they roll out are only partially complete, and then they rarely go back to complete the features.

However, the best you can do is post a message in the #show-and-tell:product-suggestions category, and tell them that you would like them to include the toolbar in the mobile embedded views.

So please post about this feature if it is important to you, just like it is extremely important to most of my clients whom I create Airtable solutions for. It seems like a huge oversight to me.

InfoWrangler
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Thank you @ScottWorld for summing up this problem so succinctly!

The users I'm trying to set this up for don't have the time (or, frankly, the tech savvy) to request the desktop site version of a page every time they need to open it up.

I need them to be able to push an icon on their home screen, which opens up a search bar, where they can enter in a number found in one field that brings up a particular view of the entire record from a particular table.

So far, I'm drawing blanks.

Ted_Beelen
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

I'm also desperately waiting for this feature! I have built a digital product catalogue with >1500 records that needs filtering to 'find' the right product. The interface uses shared Airtable views embedded into a website. It works perfect on larger screens and even the standard responsive interface is perfect, but the absence of the search & filter toolbar on mobile devices makes it almost unworkable on mobile devices. 

Since we're using a lot of columns in the desktop overview, forcing a mobile phone to desktop view is not convenient. It does not make sense to me that this search & filter toolbar is not available for mobile phones...

Any development in this would be greatly appreciated!!!

 

Yeah, it’s a major drawback to Airtable.

Sadly, I had 2 clients leave Airtable over this issue. They switched to FileMaker, which is the database language that I specialized in for 30 years. (If you need a referral to a great FileMaker developer, just reach out to me through my Airtable consulting website.)

If you decide to stick with Airtable, the only way to workaround this problem is to use an external interface/portal app for Airtable, all of which offer mobile friendly views that can be embedded.

A few of the leading customer portals are Noloco, JetAdmin, Softr, Pory, and Glide.

Noloco is probably the most powerful & customizable one.

The CEO of Noloco gave a demonstration of his product on this Airtable podcast episode.

I also give a brief tutorial of Noloco on this Airtable podcast episode.

And I also presented a full one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld