AbstractPlanar chromatography (PLC) is gaining importance in the analysis of natural products. Sophisticated instrumentation has become available in this field. Major progress in planar chromatography has been achieved through the development of forced‐flow techniques. Progress has also been made in the capillary‐controlled flow techniques with the use of modified development chambers. A large variety of stationary phases is available and strategies to optimize mobile phase compositions in PLC have been developed. The detection and quantitation in PLC has improved through direct coupling of PLC with spectroscopic methods with and the use of modern, computerized scanning densitomet