Improved full screen mode, now available!

Morgan Kozol

Hi Community, 

In April, we introduced the new Smartsheet experience. While we’ve heard you love the addition of home and updated navigation, we also heard from you that the update takes up more space in sheets and reports, which was especially noticeable on small screens like a laptop. We heard you, and today the product team is happy to deliver an improved full-screen mode to help you regain screen real estate, when you need it.  

On the right side of the toolbar, you’ll notice a new full-screen button. This replaced the previous chevron that collapsed the toolbar. 

After clicking the button, you’ll enter our improved full-screen mode, which now includes the feature bar on the right hand side. In full screen mode, navigation options are hidden (navigation bar and search bar) to give you even more working area.

Bonus tip! Use our new Hotkeys to enter and exit full screen view quickly

• Mac: Control + Shift + F 
• PC: Ctrl + F1

Why did we make this change?

Based on your feedback, we moved the full-screen button from the bottom left to a more prominent location at the top of the sheet to make it easier to find and use. This button will always be visible in the toolbar for quick access, no matter what size screen you are on.

We want to thank you again for taking the time to provide feedback, as it helps us understand what’s most important to you. We’ll continue to post in the Community as we make updates to spacing in sheets and reports, so stay tuned! And as always, if you have suggestions on how we can continue to improve, fill out an Enhancement Request for our product team to review. 

Cheers,

Morgan

Rachel Paiva

Smartsheet team, in case you're unaware: In this update, when you shifted the full-screen button from lower-left corner to upper-right corner, it actually reduced the amount of horizontal working space by about 1 cm (on my 24-inch monitor, 1920 × 1200 display).

This further exacerbated a recent issue with your UI release earlier this year, which sacrificed the following without adding any real functional or cosmetic value:

• The Menu bar at the top grew much taller. This shrank a lot of vertical space and reduced the # of viewable rows before having to vertically scroll.
• Addition of the new left-hand button panel (Home, Notifications, Browse, etc). This also shrank the page width, reducing the # viewable columns without having to horizontally scroll. *This problem could be easily fixed by completely removing the right-hand panel and moving those icons over to the wasted blank space in the left panel.

I maintain a ton of details in my Smartsheets, but in the interest of scroll reduction, I always adjust to fit all viewable data into the available space. Unfortunately, these UI changes have sacrificed at least 15% of the overall real estate, and there's not much more I can do to adjust.

Before both changes, there was never any need to go full-screen because the interface was already very compact. Now I have to constantly switch back and forth between full-screen & normal view (which is necessary to get to certain commands). I live and breathe in Smartsheet so it quickly becomes a big headache. :)

Please streamline these elements to return the grid to the clean thing of beauty it once was!!

Morgan Kozol

Hello Rachel, 

Thank you for taking the time to share this with us! We appreciate feedback like yours when we make updates to Smartsheet. We’re happy to hear you live and breathe in Smartsheet!

As ‘spacing concerns’ was one of the top pieces of feedback we received from customers, we’ve released several fixes since the initial launch in April to address that feedback.

Updates have included:

• Eliminating extra space in column headers
• Reducing the height of the menu bar
• Removing most of the padding around the edge of sheets

In addition, the new full screen mode removes the navigation bar (where you access Home, Notifications, Browse, etc.) providing even more usable space in sheets, when you want it. 

Can you elaborate on the “certain commands” you reference as a reason for having to switch between full and non-full screen mode?

I have directly shared your feedback with our product team, and as always, please feel free to submit any additional requests through our enhancement request form. Our product team continues to review every submission we receive. 

Thank you,

Morgan