Customize your home page

Metabase tries to keep the default home page simple, as well as give admins the tools they need to customize the home page to suit their needs.

Fig. 1. An admin's <strong>home page</strong> before any changes have been made. — Fig. 1. An admin's **home page** before any changes have been made.

Admins can customize the home page by:

Removing x-ray suggestions
Pinning a dashboard
Changing user permissions
Hiding the data section
Changing the landing page

In this article, we’ll transform the home page from fig. 1 into fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Normal user's <strong>home page</strong> with all the changes we will make. — Fig. 2. Normal user's **home page** with all the changes we will make.

Remove X-ray suggestions

There are three ways to remove X-ray suggestions from the home page:

Hiding the X-ray section
Toggling off X-rays
Pinning a dashboard

We recommend you pin a dashboard because that method is easily reversible, keeps X-rays accessible when browsing data, and further personalizes the home page.

Hide X-ray section

Hiding the X-ray section removes X-rays from the home page without making any other changes.

Admins can hide X-rays by clicking the gray X that appears when you hover over any portion of the X-ray section (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Hovering over the <strong>X-ray</strong> section and showing the hover text: 'remove these suggestions.' — Fig. 3. Hovering over the **X-ray** section and showing the hover text: 'remove these suggestions.'

To restore the X-ray section, you’ll need to change your environment variables. For example, you can apply the change to a Metabase instance by starting up your instance with:

java -DMB_SHOW_HOMEPAGE_XRAYS="true" -jar metabase.jar

Toggle off X-rays

Toggling off the X-ray feature removes X-rays from the home page, but also turns off X-ray suggestions everywhere else.

From the Metabase Admin section, go to the general settings, and toggle off X-ray features (fig. 4).

Fig. 4. Toggling off <strong>X-ray features</strong> in Metabase Admin's general settings. — Fig. 4. Toggling off **X-ray features** in Metabase Admin's general settings.

Toggling off X-ray features prevents users from seeing X-ray suggestions and saving new X-rays.

You can toggle X-ray features back on whenever you want.

Pin a dashboard

Collections allow you to pin items like questions and dashboards to the top of a collection. To pin a dashboard to the home page, you simply pin it in the Our analytics collection. Note that only people in groups with curate collection access to a collection will be able to pin things in it.

Go to the Our Analytics page by clicking the Browse all items button in the Our Analytics section of the homepage. On Our Analytics page, click on the Dashboards tab to view all your dashboards.

When you hover over a dashboard in the list, an ellipsis (…) will appear on the right side of the list item. Click the ellipsis and a dropdown menu will show you all your dashboard options (fig. 5).

Fig. 5. The dropdown menu from a dashboard ellipsis. The <strong>dashboard options</strong> are pin this item, move this item, duplicate this item, and archive this item. — Fig. 5. The dropdown menu from a dashboard ellipsis. The **dashboard options** are pin this item, move this item, duplicate this item, and archive this item.

Select Pin this item, and the dashboard you’ve selected will move to the pinned section along the top of the Our Analytics collection. Pinning dashboards will replace the X-rays section on the home page with a section for your pinned dashboards. You can unpin a dashboard at any time by going to Our Analytics and clicking on the …, and selecting Unpin this item. If you unpin all dashboards from the root collection, your X-ray section will reappear on the home page.

Change user permissions

Changing a user’s data permissions and collection permissions can have a big impact on a user’s home page. Permissions affect which collections appear in the Our Analytics section of the home page, which databases appear in the Our data section, whether pinned items are visible, and even which buttons appear.

In our example, we’ll change our user’s collection permissions, so that they only have access to four of our collections.

Fig. 6. The <strong>collection permissions</strong> page showing that All Users do not have access to some collections. — Fig. 6. The **collection permissions** page showing that All Users do not have access to some collections.

Changing collection permissions and data permissions will not affect the way the home page looks for admin users, as admins always have permission to see all databases and collections. Non-admin users, by contrast, will only see the databases and collections they have access to.

Fig. 7. The user's home page with <strong>data permissions</strong> applied, as well as two pinned dashboards in the <strong>Our analytics</strong> collection. — Fig. 7. The user's home page with **data permissions** applied, as well as two pinned dashboards in the **Our analytics** collection.

To experiment with permissions, you can spin up a local instance of Metabase, create a test user, and verify your permissions settings work as intended by signing in as that test user.

Hide the Our Data section

To hide the Our Data section on the home page, hover over the Our Data section and a gray X will appear next to the section title. Click the gray X to remove the section from your home page.

Like the X-ray section, you can restore the Our Data to the home page by using environment variables. For example, when starting the metabase instance, you can restore the Our Data section to the home page by running:

java -DMB_SHOW_HOMEPAGE_DATA="true" -jar metabase.jar

Just keep in mind that each user’s data permissions will determine which databases users see in the Our Data section.

Changing the landing page

With Metabase Enterprise Edition, you have even more options, including customizing the look of your Metabase instance.

Enterprise lets you specify the landing page for your instance, which you can set to a dashboard, question, or X-ray.

Fig. 8. A branded instance of <strong>Metabase Enterprise</strong> with the home page set to a dashboard. — Fig. 8. A branded instance of **Metabase Enterprise** with the home page set to a dashboard.

Check out our article on how to brand your Metabase instance.