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Google AppSheet is a powerful tool within the Google Workspace suite that allows you to build apps without coding. In this video, I explore when you might want to use Google AppSheet instead of a standard Google Sheet. While Google Sheets is great for storing and organizing data, AppSheet provides additional functionality that can turn those sheets into real apps.

Key Advantages of Google AppSheet

Better Data Validation & Input Control

AppSheet allows you to require certain fields and restrict input types, ensuring data consistency. Unlike Google Sheets, which offers basic validation but lacks strong enforcement, AppSheet provides a more user-friendly experience by alerting users when something is missing or incorrect.

Access Control & User Permissions

With AppSheet, you can restrict who sees specific menus and data within your app. For example, administrators might have access to all menus, while regular users only see certain sections. You can even filter data visibility so users only see records relevant to them.. something that is much harder to achieve in Google Sheets.

Mobile Optimization & Offline Access

AppSheet apps are designed for both desktop and mobile, making them much easier to navigate on a phone compared to Google Sheets. You can even deploy AppSheet apps to the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Additionally, AppSheet supports offline access, allowing users to enter data without an internet connection and sync changes when they’re back online.

Handling Relational Data

If your data contains relationships, like orders linked to customers, AppSheet makes it easy to navigate through related records. This is something that requires complex formulas or scripts in Google Sheets but is built-in with AppSheet.

Automations & Workflow Actions

AppSheet’s automation features allow you to trigger actions when data changes, such as sending emails, push notifications, or running scripts. While similar tasks can be done in Google Sheets using App Script, AppSheet offers a user-friendly interface to set up automations with little to no coding.

Should You Use Google AppSheet?

If you’re working with structured data and need better validation, user access control, mobile friendliness, or automation, AppSheet is a great choice. While Google Sheets remains a great tool for many tasks, AppSheet brings an app-like experience that makes data entry and interaction much smoother.

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In this video, I show three different ways to hide fields in your Google AppSheet app. This is useful for improving the user experience by ensuring only the most relevant information is displayed to your app’s users. Here’s what I cover:

Hiding Fields Completely Across the App

Sometimes, a field is only used for backend processes and doesn’t need to be visible anywhere in your app. For instance, in the example notes app I used, the Note ID column is only used internally by AppSheet for tracking and offers no value to the end-user. By unchecking the “Show” option in the data menu, this field can be hidden throughout the entire app. This ensures it won’t appear in any views or forms.

Hiding Fields in Specific Views

There are scenarios where you might want certain fields to appear only in specific views. For instance, in the notes app, I hide Public Comments and Private Comments from the list view while keeping them available in the detailed view of a note. Using the Column Order settings in the view configuration, you can control which fields are shown and in what order, allowing for cleaner and more focused views tailored to user needs.

Hide Fields Conditionally

This hides fields dynamically based on specific conditions. In the example, I ensured that Private Comments were only visible to the note creator. By using AppSheet’s expression editor and creating a condition like [Creator] = USEREMAIL(), I made sure that only the person who created the note could see those private comments. This conditional logic ensures sensitive information is displayed only when appropriate.

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Unique email addresses are really useful for testing or demo accounts, but creating them can be a real pain. One common approach is to register multiple accounts with free email services like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail, but those can be time consuming to create and difficult to track. There’s also the Gmail “+ trick,” where you add a “+” and an arbitrary string after your Gmail account name (e.g., myname+whatever@gmail.com), but that results in all the transactional and marketing emails from the services you’re testing going into your main Gmail inbox, which can flood it over time. A practical and inexpensive solution I’ve found is using .xyz “1.111B domains” along with a Mailinator Verified Pro account.

Gen.xyz, which maintains the .xyz domain space, offers what they call 1.111B domains. These include any numeric combination from six to nine digits (e.g. 101010.xyz), priced at $0.99 per year, or even less with some registrars like Namecheap, where they’re currently $0.84 per year. 1.111B domains are ideal for test accounts because they’re unique to you and aren’t recognized as known “catch-all” or junk mail domains, which some services may disallow.

Alongside your domain, you’ll need a Mailinator Verified Pro account. This single-user account is free if you enter your contact information and provide a supported use case, like testing. You can configure Mailinator to use your 1.111B domain, and once you update your DNS MX records to point at Mailinator, emails addressed to any address at your domain will be delivered to a single Mailinator inbox.

A bonus feature of Mailinator Verified Pro is webhook testing. With this, you can create up to 10 custom webhook URLs, and any messages sent to those URLs will be delivered to your Mailinator inbox. This is particularly helpful for webhook development, as it lets you to capture and inspect payloads before deploying your endpoint, or if you prefer to keep test data out of a live system.

For less than $1 a year, an .xyz domain combined with Mailinator Verified Pro makes it easy to generate all the test email addresses you’ll ever need.