# Tableau 10: Design for mobile devices (device specific designer)

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2016-08-09
- **Format:** Video · 11 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Tool strategy
- **Tools:** Tableau (dashboards, device designer, formatting)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-10-design-for-mobile-devices-device-specific-designer
- **Watch:** https://www.youtu.be/O41qeiiNjG4

I walk through the new device-specific designer in Tableau 10, using a marathon route dashboard I'd previously built in separate mobile and tablet versions. I show how to preview and add phone, tablet and desktop layouts, and explain why this approach isn't truly responsive and the quirks I hit along the way.

## Key takeaways

- Tableau 10's device preview lets you add dedicated phone, tablet and desktop layouts from a single workbook instead of building separate dashboards switched via CSS and JavaScript
- The feature isn't responsive in the web sense — there are no breakpoints, you design each device layout explicitly, which Tim argues makes sense because visualisations lack the uniform rules buttons and paragraphs have
- Floating layout containers cause problems on mobile; layout containers fit far better because you need everything to sit logically on a scrollable canvas
- Device layouts share underlying elements, so editing one item (like switching a click action to touch, or repositioning a map) can unintentionally change it across other layouts
- Tableau auto-sizes content reasonably well with options like 'fit all' and 'fit width', but you'll often need to manually reposition elements and accept a messier process for narrow phone screens

## Chapters

- 0:00 The old multi-version approach
- 1:05 Device preview and adding layouts
- 2:42 Phone layout and floating container problems
- 5:46 Why it isn't responsive design
- 7:24 Refining the phone layout
- 9:20 Shared elements and remaining limitations

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/tableau-10-design-for-mobile-devices-device-specific-designer

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena