Tabla on a phone

Tabla runs in a phone browser. There is no app to install and nothing separate to sign into — the same address, the same account, the same data.

The short version: you can read anything and edit anything. Adding records, editing every field type, filtering, sorting, searching, switching views, sharing a view — all of it works with a thumb. A few setup screens still want a bigger display, and they are named at the bottom.

Tap a row to open the record

On a laptop a grid is something you type directly into. On a phone the grid is for reading, and the record is where you work.

Tap any row and it opens as a full-screen sheet: every field stacked in one column, each one a real editor — dates get the calendar, selects get the choice list, links get the picker, attachments get the manager. Changes save as you make them; there is no Save button because there is nothing to save.

The ‹ › arrows in the header walk to the previous and next record without going back to the grid, so working down a list is tap, edit, next.

Two details worth knowing:

• Email, phone and website fields raise the right keyboard — the one with @, the numeric keypad, the one with .com — and turn off the autocapitalising that would otherwise put a capital letter on your address.
• Text you type is never autocorrected into something else. Formulas and the confirm-by-typing boxes need exactly what you typed.

The gestures

On a laptop	On a phone
Hover a row, click the expand button	Tap the row
Scroll the table sideways	Swipe across it
Right-click a row for its menu	Long-press the row
Double-click a table tab to rename	The tab's chevron → Rename
Double-click the database name to rename	The database menu → Rename…
Hover a column footer for Summarize	Tap the footer
Hover for the little ⓘ explanations	Tap the ⓘ

Two things are still mouse-only, and both are about arranging rather than editing: dragging a column wider and dragging a Kanban card between columns. Column widths are a laptop job — a phone fits what it can to the screen and never changes the width your desktop saved. To move a Kanban card, tap it and change the field the board is stacked by; the card lands in its new column.

Which view to reach for

Gallery is the one that was made for this, by accident: one card per screen, the fields you chose, tap to open. If you have a table you read on your phone often, give it a gallery view.

Grid shows the name column and a full field beside it: on a narrow screen the name column gives some width back rather than taking the screen, and swiping moves across the rest a field at a time. The name stays put while you swipe, so you always know which row you are reading — and the width your laptop saved is untouched.

Calendar fits the whole month, though a day is narrow enough to be a heat map rather than a reading surface. Switch the range to Day or 3 days and it becomes a proper list.

Kanban shows one column at a time and swipes sideways between them.

What still wants a bigger screen

Two screens are dense by nature and have not been made narrow:

• the field editor — choosing a type, its options, its formula
• importing — the column-mapping table

Both open and both work, but you will be scrolling sideways in a small window.

Webhooks and forms are set up on a laptop. The Data / Webhooks / Forms switcher at the top of a database is not drawn at phone width: a delivery log and a form builder are wide by nature, and a switcher with only Data left on it points at the page you are already on. On a tablet or a laptop all three are there. One thing worth knowing while you are on a phone: the dot that marks an auto-paused webhook rides that switcher, so a phone will not raise it.