# R2 Data Catalog Gets Its Own Dashboard!

Hey there, it's me, Shiichan! Today I found a treat for everyone working with data lakes. It's the story of how a certain R2 feature finally got its own proper home.

## What was announced?

The [Cloudflare Changelog](https://developers.cloudflare.com/changelog/post/2026-05-28-r2-data-catalog-dashboard/) announced that [R2 Data Catalog](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/data-catalog/) now has a dedicated dashboard section.

R2 Data Catalog lets you manage [Apache Iceberg](https://iceberg.apache.org/) tables on top of R2, and you can read and write to them from engines like [Spark](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/data-catalog/config-examples/spark-scala/), [Snowflake](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/data-catalog/config-examples/snowflake/), and [DuckDB](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/data-catalog/config-examples/duckdb/). This update makes managing it much nicer.

## The story so far

Until now, the R2 Data Catalog settings lived as a small panel embedded inside the R2 bucket settings page. That made it a bit awkward to get a full picture of a catalog or to review all its settings in one place.

With this update, it graduates from that panel and moves into its own dedicated dashboard section.

## What changes

The biggest win is being able to see your catalog's state at a glance. Catalog request counts, bucket sizes, and table maintenance status are all listed together, so "wait, what's the state of this right now?" becomes an easy check.

And when you create a new catalog, a guided wizard walks you through it, so it's friendlier even the first time.

## Dive Deep

The new dashboard is built from four main parts:

- **Catalog overview**: shows request counts, bucket sizes, and table maintenance status together.
- **Setup wizard**: creates a catalog in three steps — pick (or create) an R2 bucket, configure table maintenance (compaction and snapshot expiration), then review. It also creates the bucket and generates service credentials for you automatically.
- **Settings management**: each catalog gets its own settings page where you can handle general config, table maintenance, service credentials, and disabling the catalog. You can now enable and configure [snapshot expiration](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/data-catalog/table-maintenance/) right from the dashboard.
- **Metrics**: five built-in charts — bytes compacted, files compacted, catalog requests, storage size, and snapshots expired.

If you want to try it hands-on, check out the [getting started guide](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/data-catalog/get-started/) and the [manage catalogs documentation](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/data-catalog/manage-catalogs/). And by the way, pairing it with [R2 SQL](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2-sql/) lets you run queries against your catalog tables too.

## Wrap-up

- R2 Data Catalog moved from a panel inside bucket settings into its own dedicated dashboard.
- Four parts: an overview view, a three-step setup wizard, per-catalog settings pages, and five kinds of metrics.
- Being able to configure snapshot expiration straight from the dashboard is a quietly handy touch.

This update is perfect for anyone building a data lake on R2 or wanting a proper view of how their Iceberg tables are doing!