Every Friday we update this page with the latest new features, fixes, and updates on PostHog Cloud in the last seven days. We also feature notable additions to the blog and docs.
Some new features you read about below may still be in beta, behind a feature flag, or only available to paying users. Want to see which betas are currently available? Check the roadmap!
April 7, 2023
There was no Changelog update last week because the team was away at our annual company offsite. We'll have some info on what we got up to on the blog soon!
Dashboard template library
We've not only created a wealth of new dashboard templates to help you get started, but a public library to help you navigate and understand them. You can now effortlessly build an AARRR dashboard, a Google Analytics-like landing page report, or a centralized location for your user research, as well as other typical use-cases. There are now more than 10 templates to choose from!
These improvements came out of our company hackathon, which took place at our offsite in Aruba. Every year, we challenge everyone to pitch ideas and then develop them over a short period and present to the rest of the company. This idea was proposed by our technical content marketer, Ian Vanagas - so be sure to let him know what you think of it in the Slack!
March 24, 2023
Autocapture toggle
We very strongly believe that autocapturing events is a good idea, but there are definitely situations when you may want to toggle it on/off – such as if you only want to ingest specific events.
In the past, if you wanted to toggle autocapture on/off, you'd need to access our JS snippet directly. That could be a bit of a pain, so we've added a new option for it in your Project Settings.
Product for Engineers
You may remember our old newsletter, HogMail. Well, now it's grown up and moved to Substack, renamed as Product for Engineers. It's a twice-monthly newsletter about helping engineers to build better products. You can subscribe for free, today.
Every issue of Product for Engineers has a theme which we explore through curated links, original commentary, tutorials and advice about the way we work. The theme for the first issue? Talking to users.
March 17, 2023
Beta: Lightning mode
As teased on Twitter last week, we’re currently trialing a new speed setting for PostHog which we call Lightning Mode. When enabled, insights will sample only 10% of your data, so you can get results faster when interrogating very large data sets.
Lightning mode is currently in beta. Want to give it a go? Let us know in the community Slack!
Beta: Sampling selector
In addition to lightning mode, we’ve also added a more detailed sampling selector which works only at the per-insight level. The idea is that, while lightning mode is useful for when you need answers in a hurry, there are other times when you may want to choose a more delicate balance between speed and accuracy. That’s where the sampling selector comes in.
Like lightning mode, sampling is currently available as an opt-in beta. Raise your hand in the Slack if you want to try it out.
PostHog for Startups
When we launched PostHog, we benefitted tremendously from the advice of other founders and teams in the Y Combinator programme. Now, we’ve launched our own programme to share our knowledge and help other startups grow.
PostHog for Startups is open to companies that are less than two years old and have raised less than $2 million in funding. In addition to a $50k PostHog credit, you’ll also get access to exclusive ‘Office Hours’ events, promotion opportunities and free PostHog merch.
New docs navigation
We've fully overhauled the PostHog navigation to make it easier to find the help you need, and especially make it easier to find feature-specific information and help for getting started. Every part of PostHog now has it's own feature-specific hub page, and we've pinned important content such as how to get started with session recording.
What’s New?
To make it easier for you to keep up to date on what’s happening in PostHog, and to stay informed about our latest releases, we’ve added a new button to the help navigation. It’s called ‘What’s new?’ and it brings you here, to the changelog, so you can find out what’s new.
You can log into PostHog now to try it out, and be bought right back to this very paragraph!
March 10, 2023
Dashboard templates
We want to make it easier and faster for users to find useful information in PostHog — dashboards are a key part of that because they’re often one of the first things users build. So, we’ve added a new selection of dashboard templates, as well as a new wizard that’s a little easier on the eye.
We’ve added a few simple templates to start with, for getting insights into areas such as online advertising, website traffic and user research. Got other ideas? Let us know in the PostHog Slack!
Hedgehog Mode collisions
Hedgehog mode has had a frankly startling amount of improvements in recent weeks, but the latest is one of the most fun yet. We’ve now added collision detection, so that you can make Max (that’s his name) jump around all over the PostHog UI.
Is this important? Is it our defining feature? Is it the foundation for even crazier projects to come at our next hackathon? The answer to all of these questions is, yes, probably - and you can turn on Hedgehog Mode via the in-app drop down menu.
Feature flags for Flutter
We always love adding user contributions into PostHog, especially when they have such a storied past as this one. In June 2021, we asked for contributions to our Flutter library, to extend feature flag support there. In August 2022, Etienne Théodore stepped up to the plate and took on the task. We were admittedly slow getting this PR approved, but can now happily say that our Flutter library includes feature flag support.
Memphis Export app
Memphis is an alternative to traditional message brokers, enabling you to build modern, queue-based applications. The team there recently created their own PostHog app, which enables you to publish events from PostHog to a Memphis station upon ingestion, so you use them as triggers. Check the docs for more info
Notification Bar app
The notification app has actually been available for a while, but somehow missed getting an announcement at the time. It’s part of the site apps beta, which enable you to add features to your site via the PostHog JavaScript library — in this case, adding a notification bar for delivering important messages. Check the docs for more info!
Want to make your own PostHog apps? Check the docs for tips on how to use PostHog's in-app source editor.
March 3, 2023
2FA authentication
Security is a big focus for us right now, as we work towards full SOC2 authentication - and two-factor authentication is the latest element of that.
Want to enable 2FA? Head to your Project Settings to get started. You'll then get your own QR code like the one above (which, don't worry, is for a test environment) to set it up with apps such as Google Authenticator.
Hedgehog Mode
Let's get the biggest and most important updates out of the way first. We've updated our hedgehog mode, which you can access via the help menu in the app, to include some extra features.
You can now control Max (that's his name) using the WASD keys, and we've also added a physics engine to give him a proper sense of gravity and inertia. You can make him jump with W, or spin with S.
React library
Our Head of Product, Luke, decided to stretch his engineering skills this week and added a new React library which makes it easy to use product analytics and feature flags with React and Next.js apps. This is available in posthog-js from version 1.50.
You can now integrate PostHog using the PostHogProvider. PostHog then provides a bunch of hooks including usePostHog to access the initialized client, and the feature flag hooks useFeatureEnabled and useFeaturePayload. Checkout the React docs or the Next.js docs for more information.
New toolbar element selector
We've added a new element selector to the PostHog toolbar so that it's easier to create actions in some circumstances.
The new modal shows the HTML elements wrapping the selected element, so that your clicks build up a selection. Want to give it a go? We've updated our toolbar tutorial with instructions.
URL query parameter converter app
Community member Benjamin Werker has contributed a new app which automatically converts URL query parameters into PostHog event properties. It's especially useful for analysing content and search performance in PostHog, and our marketing team are big fans of it. Thanks, Benjamin!
Outfunnel app
The folks at Outfunnel have contributed a new app which enables you to export data from PostHog to Outfunnel. This is mainly useful for scoring leads based on their behaviour, or using them as triggers for automations.
Want to make your own PostHog apps? Check the docs for tips on how to use PostHog's in-app source editor.
February 24, 2023
Performance monitoring in session recordings
Paid feature
Thanks to Team Session Recording, you can now track network performance across a user session. Now you'll be able to see not only what your users are doing, but also how long each action takes, and if there were any issues that may have impacted their experience.
Armed with this information, you can now get a better understanding of where you can improve the user experience and create a faster, smoother product — check the Session Recording docs to find out more.
User interview app released
Curious how we gather user feedback at PostHog? We've automated it using the User Interviewer app. The app enables us to target users based on their actions, cohort or properties, who we then invite to schedule an interview with our Product team via Calendly.
We find this works a lot better than trying to identify and schedule calls individually – we increased booking conversion from 3% to 16% using this app – so we’ve now made it available in the PostHog app directory.
JSON feature flags released
We’ve rolled JSON feature flags out to make feature flags on PostHog even more flexible and reactive than ever before. You’re now no longer limited to using strings as flag keys, and can also send arbitrary data as a JSON payload.
The ability to send arbitrary data is especially powerful, as you can use this to trigger UI changes for users — enabling you to make real-time changes to your product without the need to redeploy. Check the feature flag docs for more information!
UX and insight updates
We’ve released a small trilogy of minor UX and UI improvements this week...
- We now show pie chart values against segments
- We now automatically resize insight legends to be more readable
- We now prevent you from hiding table rows in a dashboard view
Each of these UI updates came in response to a user suggestion. If you’ve got ideas for how we can make PostHog better, please file a feature request on GitHub!
Featured Tutorial: Find out how to join the site apps beta, schedule interviews with your users to get feedback and build better products in Ian’s latest tutorial.
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