---
title: Widgets
description: Building blocks for dashboards — charts, text, controls, AI summaries, and layout elements that you arrange on the canvas to tell your data story.
---

Widgets are the building blocks of a dashboard. Each tile placed on the canvas in the [dashboard builder][ref-workbooks] is a widget — a chart, a block of text, a control that viewers interact with, an AI-generated summary, or a layout element such as a spacer or divider. Combine them to assemble polished, interactive views of your data.

## Widget types

The dashboard builder supports the following widget types:

- [Charts](/docs/explore-analyze/dashboards/widgets/charts) — Visualize reports from your workbook
- [Text](/docs/explore-analyze/dashboards/widgets/text) — Add titles, descriptions, and rich formatting in Markdown
- [Controls](/docs/explore-analyze/dashboards/widgets/controls) — Let viewers filter the data, switch the time granularity, swap which field the charts are built on, or drive several controls at once
- [AI summary](/docs/explore-analyze/dashboards/widgets/ai-summary) — Generate narrative summaries of dashboard data on demand
- [Spacer & Divider](/docs/explore-analyze/dashboards/widgets/layout) — Non-data layout elements for whitespace and section breaks

## Adding widgets

Add widgets from the toolbar at the top of the dashboard builder: pick reports from the **Charts** picker to add charts, use the **Add Widgets** menu for text, AI summaries, and layout elements, or the **Add Controls** menu for **Filter**, **Time Granularity**, **Field Switcher** and **Parent** controls.

Each item — a toolbar button, or an option inside the **Add Widgets** / **Add Controls** menus — can be added in two ways:

- **Click** it to drop the widget into the first open spot on the canvas.
- **Drag** it from the toolbar onto the canvas to place it exactly where you want. As you drag, a full-size placeholder previews the widget's footprint and the surrounding widgets reflow to open a slot; release to drop it there. Dragging is especially handy on dense dashboards, where clicking would otherwise place the new widget far down the page.

Starting a drag from a menu option closes the menu, so it doesn't cover the canvas while you place the widget.

## Arranging widgets

Drag any widget to move it, and use the handle in its bottom-right corner to resize it — the surrounding widgets shift to make room.

To work with several widgets at once, select them first:

- **Click** a widget to select it.
- **Shift-click** to add widgets to, or remove them from, the selection.
- **Drag a marquee** — press on any empty part of the canvas and drag a rectangle over the widgets you want; every widget it touches is selected.

With a selection in place:

- **Move the group** — drag any selected widget and the whole selection moves together, keeping its relative arrangement.
- **Delete the group** — press **Delete** or **Backspace** to remove every selected widget at once.

[ref-workbooks]: /docs/explore-analyze/workbooks
