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At Databricks, we are committed to delivering a world-class, data-driven development experience in the Notebook, and we are very excited to preview the first in a series of updates to the Notebook interface.

Simplifying the Header Interface

Soon, you will see changes to the Header of the Notebook, which is the very top part of the interface containing the notebook’s title, the currently selected compute resource, action menus, and “Schedule” and “Share” buttons.

The current Notebook Header
                                                                  The current Notebook Header

This component of the interface will be replaced by the following, newly refreshed version.

The new Notebook Header
                                                                  The new Notebook Header

You’ll notice that we are preserving the basic structure of the Header while moving to a cleaner and more modern visual appearance that is analogous to other familiar authoring experiences. These changes aim to:

  1. Highlight the most important Notebook actions in a single place, on the right side of the Header;
  2. Consolidate the Notebook’s remaining primary actions into a set of standard menus, akin to other authoring tools like Google Docs;
  3. Improve the discoverability of current and future Notebook capabilities; and
  4. Generally declutter the Notebook interface, making better use of screen real estate so users can focus on development.

The main relocation that is happening in this update is the moving of the compute resource selector from the bottom-left of the Header to a new selector button to the left of the “Schedule” button.

Previous and updated compute selection elements

The old compute selection dropdown below the notebook name

Previous and updated compute selection elements

The new compute selection button on the right of the Header

Additional Changes

While compute selection is likely to be the most noticeable change, there are quite a few other updates to the header as well. We list a summary of all the additional changes below.

Action

Previous location

New location and behavior

Choose a compute resource (attach or detach a cluster)

Below notebook name at upper left

Below notebook name at upper left

Drop-down menu at upper right

Drop-down menu at upper right

Drop-down menu at upper right

Drop-down menu at upper right

Improved behavior for automatic selection of appropriate compute resources

Menus

No change to location

Expanded and revised menus which consolidate actions into more discoverable locations and provide keyboard accessibility

Language selector

No change to location

No change to location

Drop-down menu replaces dialog to select new language

Drop-down menu replaces dialog to select new language

Repo identifier

Left of notebook name

Left of notebook name

Right of notebook name

Right of notebook name

Revision history

Upper right

Upper right

“Last edit…” message next to menus

"Last edit…” message next to menus

Comments

Upper right

Upper right, only icon is shown

Upper right, only icon is shown

Experiments

Upper right

Upper right, only icon is shown

Upper right, only icon is shown

Run all

Run all menu

Run menu, or shift + option + enter

Clear

Clear menu

Run menu

Help

Menu

Expanded notebook help menu

Recent activity

at upper rightat upper right

File menu

Keyboard shortcuts

at upper rightat upper right

Help menu, or just press H

Schedule notebook

Upper right

No changes

Share notebook

Upper right

No changes

This is just the start!

We are very excited for our users to experience this new Notebook Header and all of the improvements contained therein! This is the beginning of a series of significant changes to the Databricks user experience, and we believe that the improvements in this update will simplify users’ workflows and make the core capabilities and actions available in the Notebook easier to discover and utilize. Once it is released, please feel free to let us know what you think via the “Give feedback” link in the Header on AWS or GCP or by filling out this survey - we’re eager to hear your thoughts!

 

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