With the Blocks SDK, you can use React to create your own real-time, interactive apps that live in Airtable. We host your code, so you don't have to worry about servers or setup. You can create your app in your own development environment and import your favorite npm packages.

Custom Apps are part of Airtable Apps, a Pro plan feature. Apps let you extend the functionality of your bases: you can use apps to bring new information into Airtable, visualize and summarize your records in colorful ways, and even directly integrate your Airtable bases with your favorite third-party applications. Custom App development will be available on the Free and Plus plans until March 2021. 

The full API Reference and tutorial guides for the Blocks SDK can be found on our developers site. 

Getting started with Custom Apps

To get your development environment ready for building custom apps with React, view our Getting started guide on the developer documentation site.

Once you have completed the prerequisites in the getting started documentation, you can create a new app using the "Build a custom app" button in the marketplace.  

The best way to understand how to build a custom app is to try out the Hello world tutorial and the To-do list tutorial in the developer documentation. Once you've gone through the basics of setting up your devleopment environment, there are more advanced guides that cover topics like reading and writing data in your Airtable base and running your app in multiple bases. The API reference section details classes, method names, and UI components that are specific to the Airtable Blocks SDK.

Exploring examples

The custom apps platform comes with example apps that you can use as a starting point for your own app. The example apps built by Airtable are available in the "Build an app" modal —  if you'd like to start from scratch, select the "Hello World" example. Otherwise, choose an example app that is most similar to what you'd like to build, or one that has functionality you'd like to replicate in your own app. 

If you want to start from a custom app that someone else has built, you can use the "Remix from GitHub" option and paste in link to the GitHub repository. 

A few of the example apps have also been added to the apps gallery if you would like to explore their functionality. You must have a Pro plan to install these published versions of the apps.

FAQ

If you have questions about getting started or what you can do with custom apps, take a look at our Custom Apps FAQ.