Hiding Download Button in Snowsight: A Step-by-Step Guide

Even with great governance in place, I still get asked a lot: “Can we hide the Download results button in Snowsight for certain users?” It’s a fair question-organizations want to reduce casual data export from the UI without shutting it off for everyone.

Snowflake gives us a clean control for this: DISABLE_UI_DOWNLOAD_BUTTON. In this quick walkthrough, I’ll set the context, show you a Python stored procedure that applies the setting in bulk to all members of a role, and cover how to verify and roll it back.

Let’s dive in.

What This Setting Does

• DISABLE_UI_DOWNLOAD_BUTTON can be set at the account or user level (there’s no role scope).
• User-level wins: If you set it to TRUE for a user, the download button is hidden in Snowsight for that user-no matter which role they’re using.

Create the Stored Procedure

This procedure accepts a role name and a parameter/value pair, finds all current users granted that role, and applies the parameter to each user via ALTER USER.

USE ROLE ACCOUNTADMIN; USE SCHEMA <DB>.<SCHEMA>; CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE SET_USER_PARAMETER_FOR_ROLE( ROLE_NAME STRING, PARAMETER_NAME STRING, PARAMETER_VALUE STRING ) RETURNS STRING LANGUAGE PYTHON RUNTIME_VERSION = '3.11' PACKAGES = ('snowflake-snowpark-python') HANDLER = 'set_user_parameter' EXECUTE AS OWNER def set_user_parameter(session, role_name, parameter_name, parameter_value): try: query = f""" SELECT grantee_name FROM SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE.GRANTS_TO_USERS WHERE ROLE = '{role_name}' AND deleted_on IS NULL """ result = session.sql(query).collect() users_processed = 0 for row in result: user_name = row['GRANTEE_NAME'] alter_command = f"ALTER USER {user_name} SET {parameter_name} = {parameter_value}" session.sql(alter_command).collect() users_processed += 1 return f"Successfully set {parameter_name} = {parameter_value} for {users_processed} users with role {role_name}" except Exception as e: return f"Error occurred: {str(e)}"USE ROLE ACCOUNTADMIN;
USE SCHEMA <DB>.<SCHEMA>;
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE SET_USER_PARAMETER_FOR_ROLE(
    ROLE_NAME STRING,
    PARAMETER_NAME STRING,
    PARAMETER_VALUE STRING
)
RETURNS STRING
LANGUAGE PYTHON
RUNTIME_VERSION = '3.11'
PACKAGES = ('snowflake-snowpark-python')
HANDLER = 'set_user_parameter'
EXECUTE AS OWNER
def set_user_parameter(session, role_name, parameter_name, parameter_value):
    try:
        query = f"""
        SELECT grantee_name 
        FROM SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE.GRANTS_TO_USERS 
        WHERE ROLE = '{role_name}' 
        AND deleted_on IS NULL
        """
        result = session.sql(query).collect()
        users_processed = 0
        for row in result:
            user_name = row['GRANTEE_NAME']
            alter_command = f"ALTER USER {user_name} SET {parameter_name} = {parameter_value}"
            session.sql(alter_command).collect()
            users_processed += 1
        return f"Successfully set {parameter_name} = {parameter_value} for {users_processed} users with role {role_name}"
    except Exception as e:
        return f"Error occurred: {str(e)}"

Notes:

• Uses SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE.GRANTS_TO_USERS to locate users by role membership.
• Runs EXECUTE AS OWNER so callers don’t need elevated privileges (the owner does).

Run It

Call the procedure to hide the download button for everyone in a role:

CALL <DB>.<SCHEMA>.SET_USER_PARAMETER_FOR_ROLE( 'ANALYST_ROLE', 'DISABLE_UI_DOWNLOAD_BUTTON', 'TRUE' );

Verify

Check a user’s effective setting:

SHOW PARAMETERS LIKE 'DISABLE_UI_DOWNLOAD_BUTTON' FOR USER demo_user_001;

Operational Notes

It may be worthwhile to create a separate Snowflake role outside of any existing RBAC hierarchy specifically for setting the parameter values for users, particularly in situations where this parameter needs set for only a subset of all users. Placing the role outside of any existing hierarchy also helps prevent unintended privilege grants through inheritance.

Additionally, the procedure call could be wrapped in a scheduled task to set or reset the user parameter on the role members on a given cadence, simplifying management to just role membership.

Wrap-Up

This is a simple, repeatable pattern to align Snowsight’s download behavior with your governance standards. Because user-level values take precedence, once a user has DISABLE_UI_DOWNLOAD_BUTTON = TRUE, the button stays hidden regardless of which role they use.

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Originally published at http://ericheilman.com on August 23, 2025.