How to Blur a Metabase Dashboard or Question While Screen Sharing

To hide data in a Metabase dashboard or question while screen sharing, cover it with a pixel-level browser blur like BlurFirst before you present. Blur the question results (revenue figures and user rows with emails), the SQL in the native query editor, and any collection names that identify clients. The blur is painted into the page, so it holds up on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Loom and any recording — it doesn't depend on a Metabase permission the person watching may not have.

The parts of Metabase that quietly expose data

Metabase makes it easy to jump from a chart to the raw numbers, and that convenience is exactly what bites you on a shared screen. The dangerous surfaces are spread across the results, the query, the sidebar and the schema browser.

• Question and dashboard results — the tables and charts themselves: revenue and MRR totals, user rows with email and name, order lines and record IDs.
• The Data Reference panel — schema, table and column names that map out your entire warehouse structure.
• SQL in the native query editor — a native question shows table names, joins and business logic in plain text, which is often more sensitive than the result set.
• Pulse and subscription recipients — the email addresses configured to receive a dashboard on a schedule.
• Collection names — sidebar collections are routinely named after clients, deals or internal projects.

Keep the visualization/table toggle in mind. Most Metabase questions switch between a chart and the underlying data table with a single click — so you might blur a tidy bar chart and forget that one tap on that switch reveals every raw row behind it.

Access controls protect viewers, not your screen

Metabase has groups, collection permissions and data sandboxing, and they are worth setting up — but they govern what *other logins* can open. When you present from your own admin or analyst account, you see everything, so nothing on the server stops a private number from landing in the recording. Blurring covers the values on your screen while you keep working with your normal access.

1. 1

   Install and open the question or dashboard

   Add BlurFirst from the Chrome Web Store and open your Metabase view before you start sharing.

2. 2

   Box-blur the results grid and charts

   Press Ctrl/⌘ ⇧ Y, then drag a rectangle over the results table or chart. The box stays anchored even if you scroll a long result set.

3. 3

   Element-blur emails, collections and the SQL editor

   Click an email or name column, the collection title in the sidebar, or the native-query code block to blur just that element. Click again when you deliberately want to show one value.

4. 4

   Save a per-site profile

   Save the blur for your Metabase host so it auto-applies on load. It stores only CSS selectors and re-applies after Metabase re-renders — including when you flip between the visualization and the table view.

5. 5

   Keep the Panic hotkey ready

   Press Ctrl/⌘ ⇧ H to blur the whole page in one keystroke if a query returns something you weren't expecting.

It all runs locally. BlurFirst's content script lives in an isolated world with namespaced CSS, so it won't interfere with Metabase, and nothing you blur leaves the browser — the only outbound request is a license check. To speed things up on a data-heavy table, run Scan to detect and blur emails, phone numbers, credit-card numbers, SSNs and API keys in one pass. One honest limit: BlurFirst only covers content inside the browser tab, not a separate window or your whole desktop, so keep the Metabase tab as what you share.