Changelog

This week, we’ve got new AI and governance features across the platform, plus highly-requested functionality that makes it easier to slice and present your data.

💬 AI chat 🤝 notebook​

We're releasing a new element in the notebook view — an agentic sidebar. Now, it's easier than ever to ask a quick syntax question, brainstorm how to get started on an analysis, or find the data you need.

Today, this is an integrated chat with context on your data and your project, but we have a lot more coming.

Next up: generating and editing cells, smarter integrated context, and continued SQL quality improvements.

If you'd like to try out the bleeding edge and help shape where this feature goes next, you can opt into our alpha version to get the latest updates.

📓 Faster, smarter AI edits in notebook cells​

We gave the editing experience a glow-up in SQL and Python cells — making it faster, cleaner, and more intuitive.

You can now review AI edits more easily by running a cell before accepting changes. If the output is close but not quite right, you can now tweak the suggested changes directly in the diff view.

We also seriously leveled up response quality, with smarter handling for different warehouse dialects, Jinja syntax, and big ol’ blocks of code.

🔮 Rules files: context for your AI prompts​

If you’re using Claude Projects or Cursor rules, you already know how passing some high-level context to your AI agent can influence the response you get.

Now, in Magic admin settings, Hex admins can edit a markdown file which gets passed directly as part of the system prompt for all SQL and Explore cell generations. This is great for bringing in business context that you want Hex’s AI to always know about.

📊 Chart style copy & paste​

You can now copy and paste styles from one chart to another in Hex — even between projects. It’s the fastest way to keep things looking sharp without reapplying your formatting to cell after cell after cell.

Only the styles that make sense will be carried over, while your chart’s underlying data remains unchanged.

General styles (like font size or legend position) are always copied, while data-dependent styles only transfer if the data lines up — same column name, aggregation, and time unit.

🔐 Snowflake OAuth permissions for schemas​

On the Enterprise plan, Hex can now enforce OAuth permissions from Snowflake in the data browser, tightening access controls and reducing accidental data exposure.

With this feature, users will only see schema objects they’re actually permissioned to view — including in data browser search and notebook cell typeahead.

Admins can enable this by selecting the new option to apply OAuth permissions to schema data on their Snowflake connection.

To support this, we’re also rolling out mandatory service accounts for OAuth connections, which you can read more about here.

🔽 Filter on aggregates​

You can now filter on aggregations directly in Explore charts and pivots — no code required. It’s a faster, easier way to slice your data and hone in on what matters, without breaking your flow.

Under the hood, this manifests as a HAVING clause in the auto-generated SQL, limiting results after they’ve been grouped and aggregated.

Other improvements​

• IBM Db2 data connection: We added a new data connection with IBM Db2 to our growing list of data source integrations.
• Redesigned filter layout in Explore: Now when you add filters to an exploration or Explore cell, they are displayed nicely across the top of the chart or pivot — making them easier to skim and edit.
• View underlying data from pivots in published apps: Users with “Can explore” access (or higher) can now click on a pivot value in a published app to dig into the underlying row-level data behind the aggregate. This works when the pivot was built in an Explore cell.

❄️ Snowflake integrations with Semantic Views and AISQL​

With our new Snowflake integrations, you can define semantic models in Snowflake and bring this trusted context into Hex for a single source of truth.

It’s now faster and easier than ever to deliver consistent, governed insights:

• ✍️ Create Snowflake Semantic Views right from the Hex notebook
• 📊 Jump into Explore for quick and intuitive visual analysis
• 🔮 Use Magic to ask questions on your modeled data

Read our full announcement to learn more about our new Snowflake integrations — including AISQL for calling multimodal LLMs in SQL cells.

We’re kicking off Big Data Summer with highly-requested updates that will speed up your analytical workflows and allow you to customize Hex in small-but-mighty ways. Let’s get into it. 😎

🧮 Aggregate calculations​

Want to define a ratio of sums? A weighted average? Or some other custom measure to use in charts and pivots?

Editors and Explorers can now use Hex's Excel-inspired calculation language to define dynamic aggregations within explorations and Explore cells.

These aggregations automatically update based on how you group your data — without using any SQL or Python. And since explorations show the row-level data behind the calcs, your teammates can easily jump in and build on your work.

🔢 Formatting for numeric input parameters​

You can now format numeric input parameters as a percentage or currency, limit the number of decimal places, and add commas using the thousands separators.

The input parameter’s output is still a plain numeric value under the hood — this feature just makes numbers in your app easier for stakeholders to read and interact with.

Pro tip: Hold the shift key to increase the step size when adjusting a number, and hold the alt key for smaller steps.

🏃 Run selected SQL​

When you’re writing a complex query, it’s a hassle to break out a whole new cell just to test or debug part of the code. Now, you can iterate in place with run selected SQL.

Just highlight the snippet you want to run, and hit Command+Enter (or the run button) to execute only the selected code.

📜 Scrollable charts in published apps​

With scrollable charts, you no longer have to choose between showing all your data or keeping your viz tidy. Now, you can set a smaller viewport that shows the most relevant data, and let users scroll to explore the rest.

No more stuffing extra data into an “Other” bucket that feels like a black box to viewers. Scrollable charts allow you to keep the long tail within reach without taking up too much real estate in your published apps.

📊 More customizable tooltips in charts​

Chart tooltips just got a major glow-up: format and reorder values, add aggregated columns, rename labels, and view color swatches that match legend colors — all in a few clicks.

Still seeing the old UI? Just switch from Manual to Auto mode to reset and unlock all the new goodies.

Other improvements​

• Faster package installs: Use !uv pip install instead of !pip install for package installs that are 10-100x faster. ⚡
• Hide chart titles: You can now toggle off x- and y-axis titles, facet titles, and legend titles directly in the UI. Say goodbye to hacks like adding a space to hide titles.
• Drag columns from tables in explorations: Just like from the sidebar, you can now drag and drop column headers from tables into drop zones to configure an exploration.
• Link from published app cell to notebook cell: From the three-dot menu of a cell in a published app, you can click “View in notebook” to jump straight to the corresponding cell in the notebook — no scrolling needed!
• Allow empty dropdowns: You can now make dropdown inputs optional. Instead of forcing a default selection or creating a “None” option, just toggle on “Optional” to let users clear the selection and reset the value to null. All existing dropdowns will stay required and behave as they have before.
• File upload improvements: Got more CSVs to add? Drop them into the Files sidebar, even if there are already files there. We also changed the default sort so your most recent uploads show up right at the top.
• Export Snapshots as a PDF: You can now export full Snapshots directly as PDFs to share with your stakeholders.
• Enhanced run stats: View run stats in debug mode for published apps; see SQL cell query execution times, connection times, and cache retrieval times; identify execution type of non-code cells in the run stats panel; and hover over a SQL query to see the result set size in a tooltip.

This week’s updates are all about making the everyday workflows in Hex faster and easier. We went back to the basics with much-loved, highly-requested improvements that cut down on clicks, scrolling, and workarounds — so building in the notebook and app builder feels smoother than ever.

💪 Bulk column formatting​

Your database returns date columns in “2025-05-07” format, but your stakeholders prefer “7 May 2025.” You’ve got better things to do than reformat those columns one by one.

With new bulk column formatting in tables and explorations, you can filter by type, hit “Select all,” and apply formats across multiple columns at once. We did the math, and that’s way fewer clicks than before. 🤓

You can now hide and show columns in bulk, wrap and unwrap text in bulk, see the number of columns selected, and clear all selections with a single click.

We also added a new tab for quickly pinning and reordering columns in a list view instead of dragging columns across a mile-long table. As always, we’d love to hear what you think!

📁 More file types for upload inputs​

We’ve seen some truly inventive workarounds for uploading Excel files with non-tabular data. But those days are behind us.

File upload inputs now support more than just CSVs, opening the door to richer interactivity (and some pretty cool AI workflows, too).

Choosing Excel as the upload type returns a dictionary with a dataframe for each tab — great for multi-sheet .xlsx files.

Or the file upload type lets you upload PDFs, images, Parquet files, whatever you feel like — and returns a binary you can use in downstream Python code.

🗺️ Quick nav to referenced dataframe​

When you’re troubleshooting or trying to understand the data fueling a chart or pivot cell, sometimes you just need to get back to the source: the dataframe.

Now, instead of command-F’ing your way through the notebook to find where it’s defined, you can simply click “Go to defining cell” (or use the alt-click shortcut) to jump straight there.

It’s like the reverse of hovering over a cell output variable to see where it’s used. Now you can traverse the DAG in both directions, making it a whole lot easier to navigate large projects.

🔗 Current inputs in copy link to cell​

Now when you share a link to a cell, you can choose to preserve the current inputs. No need to explain which filters to set or how to recreate a specific state.

Your stakeholders land on exactly what you meant to show, so you’ll hear fewer “wait, I’m not seeing that” and more “whoa, very insightful.”

🔐 OAuth summary​

For teams on the Enterprise plan using OAuth data connections, it’s now much easier to see which projects need authentication, thanks to the new OAuth summary in the notebook view.

At a glance, you’ll see whether credential sharing is enabled, who owns the token, and which OAuth connections are in play. No more digging through a long list of data connections to figure out what’s what.

When you’re viewing a published app, just click the three-dot menu to see a simplified OAuth summary there, too.

☁️ Native GCS integration​

Hex now supports a native GCS integration, so you can access files and pull in assets straight from GCS without exposing keys in your Python scripts.

Just like with the Amazon S3 integration, Admins can set up GCS as an external file integration, and Editors can import files from the data browser. Depending on your configuration, you can query, write back, or download files right from the project.

Other improvements​

• Navigate back to the source cell: When viewing an exploration, you can now use the dropdown next to its name to easily trace it back to the original cell that the “Explore-from-here” came from.
• New default navigation for Favorites: Links in the Favorites section now default to published apps, and there’s a new nav button that’ll whisk you straight to the notebook view. ⭐
• Preserve scroll position in multi-select filtering: Before, selecting multiple items would bounce you back to the top of the list each time. Now, you can filter away without the constant re-scrolling!
• Shortcut for changing text case: When editing SQL and Python cells, you can now use a keyboard shortcut (ctrl+shift+U) to toggle selected text between ALL CAPS and all lowercase for a quick case change.
• Smarter placeholders in single value cells: Instead of seeing “NaN” when values are still loading or undefined, you’ll now see more helpful placeholders in the notebook view. For null values in published apps, viewers will see “No value.”
• Copy code to clipboard from markdown cells: Hover over a code block in a markdown cell, and you’ll now see a handy copy-to-clipboard button for grabbing the content you need.
• Borders for selected text cells: We added subtle borders around text cells when selected to make the focus state more distinct.

🪛 Drilling from published apps and Explore​

“Why did this spike happen?” “Why does my data look like this?” We’ve all had those moments — staring at a published app, wishing we could dig into the underlying data to answer our follow-up questions or sanity-check a surprising trend.

With drilling, now you can. Just click on the bar (or point, or slice) you’re curious about, choose how you want to break it down, and Hex will take you straight into a drilled-down exploration.

From there, you can keep drilling to get more granular — then, drill up to return to a higher-level grouping. No need to add filters, replace axes, or wrestle with your data. Hex takes care of the busywork, so you can zoom in and out easily.

Editor and Explorer seats on Team and Enterprise plans can drill from charts in published apps, explorations, and pivots in Explore cells. Give it a spin, and let us know what you think!

🎨 Custom app themes​

When you’re presenting a production dashboard to execs, the last thing you want is to get derailed by a styling nit-pick because the font is off. 🫠

Now on Team and Enterprise plans, Admins can create custom app themes with your team’s font, background and accent colors, and a chart color palette for a branded look and feel.

Editors can apply custom app themes in the app builder to unify branding, create a consistent experience for stakeholders, and yes — finally get your charts to match those PowerPoint slides!

🔮 Ask Magic in Explore​

ICYMI, we shared a private preview of Ask Magic in Explore last month — a conversational AI interface deeply integrated with Hex, your data, and your workflows.

Magic helps you get to insights faster by drafting analyses from scratch, surfacing relevant published apps, editing existing explorations, and even answering questions right in Slack.

We’re looking for more beta customers to kick around the tires, so drop us a note at [email protected] if you’re interested in early access.

📸 Copy chart to clipboard​

We’ve built a lot of features into Hex to help close the Sharing Gap and champion a noscreenshots.club culture. But sometimes, a static, point-in-time image is called for.

Until now, grabbing an image from a published app meant right-click gymnastics that left out the legend and title, or keyboard shortcuts that flood your desktop with a bajillion screenshots.

Now, there’s a built-in button that lets anyone copy an image of the entire chart straight to the clipboard. Perfect for sharing in Slack, slides, docs, or anywhere static visuals go to live their best life.

All we ask is that you consider embedding first — for fresh data, better reproducibility, and those nifty on-hover tooltips. 😉

🔍 Search across semantic models​

Since launching Semantic Model Sync, we’ve seen teams connect their dbt MetricFlow and Cube models to power governed, self-serve metrics in Explore — allowing stakeholders to answer their own questions with confidence.

Now, we’re making it easier to navigate those imported semantic models. You can search for dimensions and measures inside models from the data browser, and jump straight into an exploration from the search results.

📊 Chart sorting improvements​

We’ve expanded sorting capabilities to make chart behavior more consistent. Now, when you switch from a bar chart to a line chart (or any other flavor), your x-axis sort stays put.

Sort categorical x-axes any way you like for all chart types and series types (including line, area, multi-series, and dual y-axis). Also, pie charts now support custom and size-based sorting. 🥧

More improvements to sorting logic are on the way (including color and facet sorting), so stay tuned. In the meantime, let us know if you have any feedback!

🔑 Magic bring your own key (BYOK)​

On the Enterprise plan, Admins can now plug in their own OpenAI API Key for Magic’s model calls for all inference and generation requests. BYOK is a great option if you’re looking for more control over governance and billing. Just head over to your Magic settings page to try it out.

Other improvements​

• Python 3.11 with Pandas 2.0 is now available as a kernel in your project dropdown, and it’s the default for new projects.
• EU data residency support for Magic: We now support full EU data residency, helping customers in Europe meet local data sovereignty requirements when using Magic.
• Improved default labels for weekly data: Charts with weekly datetime buckets used to default to labels like ”2025 W14” (kinda cryptic). Now, they show a more human-readable format like “Mar 31, 2025,” marking the start of the week.
• New relative date filters: You can now filter by “this year,” “this month,” and “this week” for those quick, intuitive time frames.
• Enhanced pie chart tooltips: Hovering over a pie chart now reveals the slice’s percentage.