Recent improvements to the Modern App Designer

The Modern App Designer has been generally available since May 2022, and since then we’ve have been closely monitoring feedback from makers. Therefore, we are pleased to announce the release of a series of significant improvements to improve maker productivity when building in the Modern App Designer.  

In summary, the app navigation is now the default panel in the designer, allowing makers to edit the sitemap efficiently. The Pages panel now has a restructured hierarchy to better align with makers’ mental model and accurately reflect any coauthoring personas. Component designers now open within the app designer (unless otherwise specified), along with improved discoverability to entry points.  

A newly improved maker navigation

We received feedback regarding the discoverability of editing the app sitemap navigation, and we heard you! The new default panel, Pages, is now a combination of the previous Pages and Navigation panels. The new Pages panel now contains two sections, Navigation and All other pages. The Navigation section shows the app navigation (also known as sitemap). The All other pages section now contains pages that are in the app, but not part of the app navigation. Makers can now move pages to and from Navigation within a couple clicks, without having to deliberately remove and readd.

The hierarchy of forms and views in the new Pages panel has also been restructured to correctly reflect mental models as well as correctly reflecting any coauthoring personas. Forms are now nested under views, creating a hierarchy as shown below.

Component designers now open within the Modern App Designer

Editing components in the Modern App Designer is now easier than ever! To edit a default view or form, hover over the selected item and select the edit pencil icon to launch the component designer. All component designers now open within the Modern App Designer, where makers can navigate back and forth using the Back button. The right panel now contains all associated views, forms, charts, and settings. Makers can not only now easily see the associated views, forms, and charts with the table, but also edit them (within, or in a new tab) in a much easier fashion.

Learn more

To learn more about the Modern App designer, refer to further documentation: Overview of the model-driven app designer – Power Apps | Microsoft Learn.