What's new in Power BI?

April 2025 Update (2.142.928.0)

In April we're showered with all sorts of updates to Power BI, enabling our customers to create a lush garden of visuals, insights, and business intelligence to data from around the world.

This article describes updates to Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service. To learn about updates for mobile, check out What's new in the mobile apps for Power BI.

The links beside each feature in the list are follows:

• [blog]: Most features are explained in a section in the monthly update blog post.
• [video]: Some features have a video excerpt that discusses the feature, which plays in a new browser tab.
• [article]: Some features have an article that provides more detail.
• The remaining features are self-explanatory and don't need an article or video.

You can also watch the entire Power BI monthly update video.

Power BI Desktop

Get the latest version of Power BI Desktop from the Download Center. If you're running Windows 10, you can also get Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store. Regardless of how you install Power BI Desktop, the monthly versions are the same, although the version numbering might differ. For more information about downloading and installing Power BI Desktop, see Get Power BI Desktop.

Important

Power BI Desktop is updated and released on a monthly basis, incorporating customer feedback and new features. Only the most recent version of Power BI Desktop is supported; customers who contact support for Power BI Desktop will be asked to upgrade to the most recent version. You can get the most recent version of Power BI Desktop from the Windows Store, or as a single executable containing all supported languages that you download and install on your computer.

Important

Power BI Desktop is no longer supported on Windows 7. Power BI Desktop is supported on Windows 8 or newer versions of Windows, for the most recent release of Power BI Desktop only.

The following updates are new to Power BI Desktop this month:

General

• Backward compatibility is impacted by Q&A setup updates [blog] [video]

Copilot and AI

• Ad hoc calculation support for data questions now available in read mode [blog] [article] [video]

Reporting

• File picker enabled by default in Power BI Desktop [blog] [video]
• Mobile layout auto-create now generally available [blog] [article] [video]

Note

See the data sources available to Power BI Desktop. Our list is always growing, so check back often.

Modeling

• Live edit of semantic models in Direct Lake mode with Power BI Desktop - updates (preview) [blog] [video] [article]
• Semantic model changes with TMDL view (preview) [blog] [video]
• Azure Maps auto-zoom now includes reference layers [blog] [video] [article]

Data connectivity

• Connect to the Vertica database with the user-installed ODBC driver - updates (preview) [blog] [video]
• Use the built-in driver to connect to Oracle (preview) [blog] [video] [article]
• Snowflake connector update [blog] [article]

Visuals

• Many new and updated visuals [blog]

Power BI service

The following updates are new to the Power BI service this month:

Other

• There are no other updates to the Power BI service this month.

For detailed information about each new feature, see Power BI feature summary blog post.

Power BI monthly update video

The following video playlist describes many of these updates. You can also watch the included videos from the blog post.

[Video Playlist]

Note

The videos might use earlier versions of Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service.

More videos

Like learning about Power BI through videos and other engaging content? Check out the following collection of video sources and content:

• Power BI channel: a collection of Power BI videos on YouTube.
• Microsoft Learn training for Power BI: a sequential learning tour of Power BI, in bite-size pieces.

Updates for previous months

Looking for Power BI updates for previous months? You can find them in the Power BI monthly updates archive.