topic Re: How to detect drill mode in Custom Visuals Development Discussion

How to detect drill mode

alexpokerface — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 09:50:48 GMT

Hi,

a quick question:

In the Power BI custom visuals API, is there any way to detect whether the visual is currently in drill mode (as opposed to normal selection mode)?

Thanks and kind regards,

Alex

Re: How to detect drill mode

dm-p — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 23:42:18 GMT

Hi @alexpokerface,

Unfortunately there's no simple method to check this. I think the only way to detect this would be to check the dataView.metadata for the presence of drillableRoles, and perhaps, based on your knowledge of your setup, whether the resulting state means you're somewhere in the hierarchy (e.g, if there's no DrillType.Up available on a role, then you are at the top of your hierarchy, and therefore you aren't in a drill state.

The pattern for interrogation of drill state here in the docs may provide a starting point for you.

Good luck,

Daniel

Re: How to detect drill mode

Gautam_Kumar01 — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 02:45:58 GMT

Hi Alex, @alexpokerface

Yes, you can detect drill mode in custom visuals.

How it works:

When a user clicks "Drill Down" in Power BI, the visual gets a new update call. In that update, Power BI tells your visual what mode it's currently in through the DataView metadata.

The Code:

Put this inside your `update(options: VisualUpdateOptions)` method:

```typescript
import { DrillState } from "powerbi-visuals-api";

public update(options: VisualUpdateOptions) {
const dataView = options.dataViews?.[0];

if (!dataView) return;

const drillState = dataView.metadata?.drillState;

switch(drillState) {
case DrillState.DrillDown:
// User clicked Drill Down on a category
// Example: Year -> Quarter -> Month
this.renderDrillView(dataView);
break;

case DrillState.Expand:
// User clicked + icon to expand tree
this.renderExpandedView(dataView);
break;

case DrillState.None:
default:
// Normal selection mode

I hope you got the answer is any problem you can freely to ask here , Thanks 😊

Re: How to detect drill mode

alexpokerface — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 06:21:44 GMT

Thanks for the snippet! I checked the current and recent versions of the powerbi-visuals-api, and neither DrillState nor dataView.metadata.drillState exists in the public API. If this comes from an internal or experimental build, that would be interesting — but in the official contract, the property isn’t available.

Re: How to detect drill mode

dm-p — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 06:29:32 GMT

Unfortunately that code looks like an hallucination - there's nothing in the APIs matching these types or methods.

Re: How to detect drill mode

asafcohen — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 09:08:57 GMT

Hi @alexpokerface ,
As @dm-p said there is no simple straight forward method to check this. However, you can do try the following, all inside update():

1. dataView.metadata.dataRoles.drillableRoles — a map of role name → the DrillType[] currently available for it. When Drill Up is available for a role, the user has drilled down at least one level, which is the reliable "am I in a drilled-down state" signal:

TypeScript

import powerbi from "powerbi-visuals-api";
import DrillType = powerbi.DrillType;

public update(options: powerbi.extensibility.visual.VisualUpdateOptions😞 void {
    const dataRoles = options.dataViews?.[0]?.metadata?.dataRoles;
    const available = dataRoles?.drillableRoles?.["category"] ?? []; // role name from capabilities "drilldown".roles

    const isDrilledDown = available.indexOf(DrillType.Up) >= 0;   // Drill Up exists => below the top level
    const canDrillDown  = available.indexOf(DrillType.Down) >= 0; // more levels below
    const drillDisabled = dataRoles?.isDrillDisabled === true;    // drilling currently turned off
}

2. After any drill, Power BI just calls update() again with a new DataView. Read the level from the data — categorical: the number of categorical.categories and each categories[i].source.displayName (e.g., Year → Quarter → Month); matrix: the depth of matrix.rows.levels and each node's level. Note the category value type can change per level (Date at the top, string lower down), so guard with categories[i].source.type before parsing.

3. To drive drilling from your own UX (e.g., double-click to drill down), call host.drill(args) (API 4.7.0+), and optionally host.setCanDrill(true/false) (5.7.0+) to enable/disable it at runtime.

Good luck,
Asaf.

References

The Drilldown API in Power BI visuals — documents the exact drillableRoles['...'].indexOf(powerbi.DrillType.Down) pattern and host.drill()
Add drill-down support in Power BI visuals
The dynamic drill-down API in Power BI visuals