What are Quick Filters in Tableau?

A quick filter is a filter exposed as a control in the view, so a reader can change its value without editing anything.

You create one by right-clicking a field on the Filters shelf and choosing Show Filter. The control type is configurable — single-value list, multi-select, dropdown, slider, wildcard search, relative date and so on.

They are the main way an interactive dashboard gets its interactivity, but they are not free. Set to Only Relevant Values, each control runs an extra query to work out which values are still valid, which is a common cause of a slow dashboard.

On a high-cardinality dimension, a wildcard search control or a parameter is usually cheaper than a list of thousands of checkboxes.