What's new on Retool

One-click reusable queries, right from your app

When you’re writing a query in an app, you may realize that it would be useful in many apps. Rather than copy/pasting your work, you can now extract your resource query to the Query Library and import your new, reusable query wherever you need it! We’ll automatically convert JS expressions to query variables, so that each app can configure its own inputs. To learn more about reusing queries with the Query Library, check out the docs.

Fixes and improvements

• Added the ability to reset all temporary state variables to their initial value
• Improved performance of Omnibox ⌘ + K (or CTRL + K)
• Included Query Library queries in Omnibox ⌘ + K (or CTRL + K)
• Fixed the Jira query editor to work correctly with POST requests
• Fixed the query editor so that its height persists throughout a session
• Fixed the canvas background color for themes in the editor
• Added support for Vim mode in code editors ⌘ + ⌥ + V (or CTRL + ALT + V)
• Fixed initial value on app load for the date/time inputs
• Fixed the function selection for Lambda queries
• Fixed S3 read queries for binary/octet-stream content-type payloads

Enterprise plan

• Added an environment variable to disable username/password login (DISABLE_USER_PASS_LOGIN)

Check out this guide to see the on-prem versions and their release notes.

Google Maps and Google Analytics integrations

Need to geocode addresses? Find the road closest to a map point? Build a realtime dashboard of visitors on your website?

We've added native integrations with two of Retool’s most commonly connected APIs: Google Maps and Google Analytics. Both integrations come with out-of-the-box authentication support and a custom query builder for discovering endpoints and validating inputs. For Google Analytics, we've prepared a transformer that makes it easy to parse reports into a clean array of objects for charting and displaying in a table format. To learn more, check out the Google Analytics and Google Maps docs.

Improved query sharing

Shared queries imported from the Query Library can now be pinned to their latest version. Before this update, any changes made to a shared query required you to manually bump the version in each app that used it. Now your apps can be in sync automatically with your shared query.

We also now include a list of apps that use a shared query in the right panel of the Query Library. When making big changes to a query (e.g. adding new variables), you can quickly open each app from the list and carefully update them, as needed.

Fixes and improvements

• Added support for copy/pasting multiple components 
• Added autocomplete for native JavaScript functions in JavaScript queries
• Added support for ES2020 features like nullish coalescing and optional chaining
• Updated pasted components to use their original name
• Improved performance of apps with a Table component
• Added a setValue API to the Slider component
• Added play, pause, and seekTo APIs to the Video component
• Added a duration property to the Video component
• Fixed inspector for the Calendar component
• Fixed the size of the Modal button when disabled
• Fixed event handlers on the S3 Uploader component 
• Fixed the default name for new S3 Uploader components
• Fixed component positioning when pasting into containers
• Fixed some folders not appearing in the "Add to folder" dropdown when creating a new app
• Added link to "Releases and history" when previewing an app

Enterprise plan

• Added support for creating releases for protected apps
• Fixed "Releases and history" to show history for the current branch on a protected app
• Enabled editors to reset a protected app to the state of a remote branch

Check out this guide to see the on-prem versions and their release notes.

Event Handlers

Think of a Retool event handler just like addEventListener in native JS or onChange in React. Before, components could only trigger a single query, and anything more advanced would require writing JavaScript. Now, you can configure components to trigger multiple queries, control other components, and call additional APIs in response to user interactions.

We’ve also greatly expanded the number of events available on components, and added new utils and component APIs. Anything you can do with Retool’s JavaScript API (e.g. query1.trigger(), modal.open(), utils.showNotification(...)) you can now do with Event Handlers. Event Handlers will be rolled out to all customers over the next few weeks. To learn more, check out the docs.

Style Editors

Every component now has a style editor in the inspector, making it easier to customize the appearance of your applications without CSS. You can edit the background, foreground, borders and more—you can even use a JavaScript expression for dynamic colors (e.g. {{ checkbox1.value ? 'purple' : 'yellow' }}). Style editors will be rolled out to all customers over the next few weeks. To learn more, check out the docs.

Group Admins

Admins can now assign Group Admins to manage membership for any custom groups.

Previously, only Admins could manage membership for custom groups. Now, Admins can grant any number of group members the Group Admin privileges to add new users or remove existing users. Group Admins will be able to see all users within an org, but are not able to modify any aspect of their group beyond membership (e.g. app and resource permissions).

Fixes and improvements

• Improved performance when typing in a TextInput
• Added the ability to unpublish a release, which switches an app back to using the latest working version
• Added an action to format SQL or GraphQL queries in the Query Library 
• Added more information to document titles to make working in multiple browser tabs easier
• Added new templates for an Elasticsearch Admin Panel, Datadog Elasticsearch Admin Panel, and Twilio + Segment Personalized Outreach App
• Reduced app startup time
• Fixed visibility of the spinner when saving changes in a Table
• Removed updatedAt property from release and commit diffs
• Improved performance of apps with multiple modules
• Fixed display of debug data when testing a custom auth flow with an OAuth step 
• Changed query search in the Query Editor to be case insensitive
• Fixed incorrect page documentation content on public apps
• Fixed styles of the color picker in the inspector
• Fixed documentation links for several resources

• Fixed "last active" date on the Users page under Settings

Enterprise plan

• Fixed default folder permissions for new pages that use Git Syncing

Check out this guide to see the on-prem versions and their release notes.

App Documentation

READMEs. README files are a staple of any programming project. If you're on the Startup plan or above, all of your Retool apps now come equipped with a built-in README file. To open it, click on the app’s description in the navigation bar. The Editor README is a great place for sharing information with other Retool editors in your organization: details on working with data sources, descriptions of business logic, or ground rules for making changes.

User Documentation. Of course, developers aren’t the only ones who benefit from documentation. For customers on plans that support end-user only permissions (Pro and above), we’ve also added User Documentation support. Here you can provide information that will be visible to your app’s users, like how to operate the app and who to contact when there’s an issue. (You can also set the docs to open automatically for users firing up the app for the first time.)

To learn more about App Documentation and how to bring sophisticated text display to Retool, check out our blog.

Fixes and improvements

• Introduced ⌘/⌃X to cut/paste components on the canvas and between apps
• Corrected placement of pasted components to be more predictable 
• Improved the Text component:
• Reintroduced a background color option
• Reintroduced support for the class attribute on HTML elements
• Improved styles for nested lists and headlines
• Fixed a bug where toggling staging mode would reset the height
• Added the ability to turn a Container into a Tabbed Container from the component’s Inspector menu
• Updated the Container deletion confirmation to list child components that will also be deleted
• Updated Table and Chart to use the currently selected query by default when created
• Updated the Table setFilters API to support "OR" in addition to "AND"
• Fixed a bug where custom CSS did not load correctly in Modules
• Added support for tabbing between components in the editor
• Added support for opening a new tab from the Omnibox by holding ⌘/⌃
• Added  keyboard shortcut to toggle the canvas grid lines (⌘/⌃+Shift+G)
• Updated the Query Library to display duration after running a query
• Updated the Releases list to include the creator and publisher of each release
• Fixed a bug where renamed components, queries, and transformers could collide with reserved Retool names (e.g. utils)
• Fixed a rare bug where JS references to a component wouldn't be updated on rename
• Improved error messages when renaming components, queries, and transformers
•  Redesigned tooltips in the Inspector
• Updated the Alert component to be resizable up to 4 rows in height
• Fixed a bug where editors without "use" permissions could add a Module to apps
• Fixed Snowflake queries to respect the DBCONNECTOR_QUERY_TIMEOUT_MS  env variable
• Fixed a bug with Stripe queries that contain array parameters
• Fixed a bug in Google Cloud Storage queries where the default export file type was invalid
• Fixed a bug where disabled users would show up in the app users list

Enterprise Plan

• Updated protected apps to create an initial commit when starting with an empty repo
• Fixed author data when syncing protected branches to Retool
• Fixed a rare bug where the GitHub API would not return the entire tree for a protected app's repo