# Drop Down Interface (not available)

**URL:** <https://community.directus.com/t/drop-down-interface-not-available/1208>\
**Category:** Help\
**Tags:** data-modeling\
**Created:** [September 22, 2025, 1:23pm UTC](https://community.directus.com/t/drop-down-interface-not-available/1208 "2025-09-22T13:23:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jeffw85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jeffw85](https://community.directus.com/u/Jeffw85)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2025, 1:23pm UTC](https://community.directus.com/t/drop-down-interface-not-available/1208/1 "2025-09-22T13:23:08Z")

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Utilizing version 11.11.0, I have a few text columns that I would like to fill from a drop down when adding a updating a record. These are text fields in a postgres database and directus reads them accordingly, however I cannot see a way to create a drop down under the “interface” setup within the UI. “Input” is currently being utilized for each of these text columns.

Is there a way to accomplish this without creating multiple child tables and linking them in a M2O interface?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bryantgillespie](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.directus.com/bryantgillespie/32/33_2.png) [@bryantgillespie](https://community.directus.com/u/bryantgillespie)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2025, 1:59pm UTC](https://community.directus.com/t/drop-down-interface-not-available/1208/2 "2025-09-22T13:59:26Z")

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Hi Jeff, welcome to the community! 👋

This seems like a solid use case for the **auto-complete input interface**. It’s basically a search input that dynamically populates dropdown choices by making a fetch request to a given URL.

> **[Interfaces | Directus Docs](https://directus.io/docs/guides/data-model/interfaces#autocomplete-input-api)**
>
> Explore our resources and powerful data engine to build your projects confidently.

 ![ScreenShot 2025-09-22 at 09.58.01@2x](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/directus/original/1X/5fce0cc8dbf65174dcef4eef2b4c503e07b1459b.png)

Here’s how you could approach this:

1. Use the auto-complete interface instead of creating formal relationships
2. Configure it to call the Directus API for the collection you want to search
3. Populate just the text value rather than creating actual relational data

This gives you the searchable dropdown behavior you’re looking for without the overhead of managing relationships between collections.

You might also check out the [extension marketplace](https://directus.io/extensions) as well to see if anyone else has already built a solution for this.

Hope that helps!