UI differences between Grafana Cloud (play.grafana.org) and self-hosted OSS version

Grafana
1

Hi everyone,

I’m comparing the UI between play.grafana.org and my self-hosted open-source Grafana instance, and I noticed some significant differences in the Explore section, particularly when viewing logs.

What I’m seeing:

  • On play.grafana.org: When I click on a log entry, a detailed panel opens on the side
  • On my OSS instance: The log detail view behaves differently (appears to open differently or not at all)

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My setup:

  • Running the latest version of open-source Grafana
  • Using Loki as the log datasource

Questions:

  1. Are there UI/UX differences between Grafana Cloud and the OSS version?
  2. Is the side panel log detail view a Grafana Cloud-specific feature?
  3. Are there any configuration settings I need to enable to get the same UI experience?
  4. Does play.grafana.org run on a different version or branch than the released OSS version?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated! I’d love to have the same smooth log exploration experience on my self-hosted instance.

Thanks!

2

Yes, Grafana Cloud != Grafana OSS. https://play.grafana.org is on fast rolling release channel, so it is getting updates daily. Of course, OSS doesn’t have daily releases, so this case could be that play.grafana.org has features that are not yet released in the OSS release.

You will not have the same OSS UI as Grafana Cloud OSS. There are many Grafana Cloud specific features. Check the doc or check OSS source code \https://github.com/grafana/grafana to see if it is/will be an OSS feature (I guess it will be), or just wait for the next OSS release (if this feature will be include there).