Glide is technically a no-code tool aimed at businesses, but you get one user-based published app for free, and you can have more “private” apps if you’re truly keeping it to your household or friend group. Each full-fledged app can have 10 users and up to 25,000 rows, which should probably be enough for most uses.

I do wish there was a “prosumer” kind of account that billed for less than $828 per year. If you want more than one (relatively) small-scale apps, there are alternatives, like Google’s AppSheet (included in most paid Google Workspace accounts). But most are just as business-oriented, and none have struck me as elegant a tool as Glide.

As mentioned, my primary use for a sheet-based app is to make searching, filtering, reading, and editing that sheet far easier. In the case of my takeout app, that meant being able to search anything—a specific restaurant, “tacos,” a quadrant of the District of Columbia. And a sorting option for when I added a restaurant, so I can find the place I added while a friend was recommending it.

Let’s whip up a webapp

Google Sheet showing the columns Restaurant, Category, Address, Order Link, Phone, Quadrant, Notes/Hours, and Added — The spreadsheet behind my “DC Takeout” app. Credit: Kevin Purdy

Throwing that sheet fresh into Glide, it’s not off to a bad start. The main view of Glide is a usable version of your app, and I can see that I can already type whatever I want into the search bar, and it will search across fields.

First version of takeout app, with a "Public" title at the top and restaurants listed below a search bar, like "Albi: Greek/Mediterranean"

I could honestly stop here if I wasn’t picky about some of the quirks I’m seeing. The app is showing screens, “Public” and “Users,” and I want to hide them. In the upper-left corner, in Navigation, I’ll click an eye icon to hide the “Users” section. With “Public” selected, I’ll change the Label in the upper-right to “DC Takeout,” and, if I was going to have more than one screen, give it an icon.