The truth is that, even if there are hundreds of Nova Packages out there, I really don't think they are that useful. They may make your life easier, and they may even be a requirement from your client. So I'll try to spare you some time if you're looking for the best Nova Packages and tell you the ones that you will want the most.

No need for a longer introduction at this point, let's just head to the list!

10. Advanced Nova Media Library

https://github.com/ebess/advanced-nova-media-library

While you're waiting for Spatie to release their official package to bring Media Library to Nova, you might want to try this one!

You have a model that accepts a collection of images, and you want to be able to uploads multiple images on this model in Nova? Advanced Nova Media Library is for you :)

9. Import and Export with Excel

https://github.com/Maatwebsite/Laravel-Nova-Excel (export)

https://github.com/Sparclex/nova-import-card (import)

This requires two packages to achieve, but hell why not?

Importing and Exporting resources is one the things my clients always request in their admin panel. So now that you're switching to Nova, here you are!

8. Filtering By Date Range

https://github.com/64robots/nova-date-filter

Again this is something that most of my clients want in their dashboard, especially for Orders and other resources that were created by their users.

7. Log Viewer

https://github.com/PHPJunior/nova-logs

Clearly the most complete Log Reader package for Laravel Nova up to this date. If Bugsnag, Honeybadger, Rollbar or Sentry is not enough for you, then you probably have to check manually the log file on your server from time to time.

No more! No more ssh, cd and cat or tail -f just to see what happened and where's the bug!

6. Prepopulate Searchable

https://github.com/alexbowers/nova-prepopulate-searchable

If you're using the Searchable Relationship field on Laravel Nova, you're probably frustrated that it takes some time to load the searchable list.

No more! Now, your "typeahead" field is already completely prepopulated.

Beware if you have a large database though, you might want to avoid to Prepopulate the field as it will slow down the loading of the entire page.

5. Unique Ajax Field

https://github.com/epartment/nova-unique-ajax-field

In my opinion this should have been available out of the box in Laravel Nova for every "unique" field from your database.

Well, now it's fixed! This is a must have for your users email field for example.

4. Charcounted fields

https://github.com/elevate-digital/nova-charcounted-fields

Some very little improvement that could have been offered out of the box in Laravel Nova as well.

3. Tags Field

https://github.com/spatie/nova-tags-field

What? You're not using the spatie/laravel-tags package to manage your taggable models? Well.. in that case, go to number 2 I guess.

But seriously, this is a must have.

2. Cache Card

https://github.com/dannyvink/nova-cache-card

Dead simple package that display a Cache Manager Card on your dashboard.

It might sounds silly, but seriously I use it on all my projects. Imagine you're caching the first page of your Articles on your blog index page. Then in Laravel Nova you create a new Article, but your cache is not refreshed nor flushed.

So you could obviously setup a model observer to clear cache when a new article is created, but that's some work, and even sometimes you won't want to clear the cache programatically.

It just happens that sometimes your client say "Hey I updated this thing but I can't see it on the front end". And then you ssh on your server and clear the cache of your app because you forgot to implement the flush mechanism in the right place.

No more! Now your client can clear the cache himself!

1. Cashier Manager

https://github.com/themsaid/nova-cashier-manager

This is obviously a must have for you only if you're using Laravel Cashier. But damn that's an impressive package! Everything is right there and you don't need to into the Stripe Dashboard anymore!

Hands down the most impressive and useful package I've used.

Bonus

BelongsTo Dependency

https://github.com/orlyapps/nova-belongsto-depend

Super useful if your relationship have dependency on other models.

Horizon Stats

https://github.com/kreitje/nova-horizon-stats

Check your Horizon instance from your dashboard without having to even go to the Horizon Dashboard!

Google Analytics

https://github.com/tightenco/nova-google-analytics

It still requires some work in order to have more features, but this is a very useful and well done package that displays some Summary Data from Google Analytics.

Very cool!