The new Looker Explore and Merge Query experience

The New Looker Explore and Merge Query Experience preview feature lets individual users have the option to try the redesigned Looker Explore and Merge Query interfaces. The streamlined interfaces make the Explore experience more intuitive and let Looker users find connections and gain insights from their data more quickly.

This page presents the following topics, which guide you through the new Explore experience:

• User and instance requirements
• Enabling the new Explore and Merge Query experience
• Finding Explores in Looker
• Accessing the new Explore experience
• Supported visualization types
• List of documentation

User and instance requirements

To enable and use the New Looker Explore and Merge Query Experience preview feature, the following requirements must be met:

• Your Looker (original) or Looker (Google Cloud core) instance must be running Looker 26.6 or later, and your Looker (original) instance must be Looker-hosted.
• You must have the Admin role to enable the New Looker Explore and Merge Query Experience preview feature.
• To view, create, or edit Explores, including Explore visualizations and merging queries, you must have the User Looker role or another role that contains the explore permission.
• To access Explore features for developers, which includes the ability to see LookML information about fields, you must have the User Looker role or another role that contains either the develop permission or the see_lookml permission.

Enabling the new Explore and Merge Query experience

The New Looker Explore and Merge Query Experience preview feature is disabled by default.

Admins can enable the New Looker Explore and Merge Query Experience preview feature by following these steps:

1. In Looker, click the Admin option in the main navigation menu.
2. Click the Preview option under the General section to open the Preview Features page.
3. Enable the New Looker Explore and Merge Query Experience switch to enable the preview feature.

Tip: For an AI-assisted experience, enable additional options on the Gemini in Looker page in the Platform section of the Admin panel.

Finding Explores in Looker

You can find prebuilt Explore queries in Looker in several ways, including the following:

• Click the Explore from Here link while editing Looks or dashboard tiles.
• Click the Explore from Here link on Alerts and scheduled deliveries.
• Follow links that are shared by other users.
• Use Quick Start analyses or Insight Assistant as a starting point in a blank Explore.
• Upload a CSV file, an XLS file, or an XLSX file. You can also use the explore Explore section in the main navigation panel to open a blank Explore.

Accessing the new Explore experience

To access the new Explore experience, the New Looker Explore Experience preview feature must be enabled for your instance. If you are not a Looker admin, ask an admin to enable the feature.

From an Explore page, click Try the new Explore to turn on the new Explore experience for all Explores that you interact with. To switch back to the classic experience, click Switch to classic Explore.

Supported visualization types

The new Explore experience only supports the following visualization types:

• Bar charts
• Column charts
• Line charts
• Single value charts
• Table charts

If you select an unsupported chart type, the visualization will render the Explore data, but there will be no configuration options available in the Style tab.

List of documentation

The following pages provide an overview of the new Explore and Merge Query experience:

• Viewing and interacting with Explores in the new Explore experience: Learn how to view, discover, and share insights in Explore queries.
• Creating and editing Explores in the new Explore experience: Learn to build queries, display results, use features for developers, and discover insights in Looker.
• Filtering and limiting data in the new Explore experience: Limit your results to the data you're interested in.
• Joining data from multiple queries in the new Explore experience: Combine data from multiple queries.
• Configuring and editing visualizations in the new Explore experience: Create visualizations and graphs based on the results of your queries.
• Using the Gemini Insight Assistant: Ask questions to gain insights into an Explore, and then use the results to build or modify the Explore.
• Using Gemini in Looker to generate Quick Start analyses: Populate Explores with fields, filters, and sorts instantly to significantly reduce time-to-insight.
• Using the Expression Assistant: Use Gemini in Looker guidance to write expressions for table calculations and custom fields.