How to Troubleshoot? Bubble Troubleshooting Guides

“Sorry, there seems to be a problem.” Bet you may have encountered some errors in your already-built apps and even in your ongoing development of an application in Bubble. This situation can be very frustrating, especially when it happens at unexpected and inconvenient times and is stacked up with countless tasks or work. This blog post will save you from headaches and time by learning some troubleshooting tips here.

According to Mike Vizard, a seasoned IT journalist with over 25 years of experience, a global survey of 950 developers finds that 38% of developers spend up to a quarter of their time fixing software bugs, with 26% of them spending up to half of their time fixing bugs. A problem that eats up your time. And bubblehelpers are going to free you from these challenges.

Why should we troubleshoot?

It is a best practice that you troubleshoot your application early and regularly to help you stay informed about your application’s logic and its overall health. You don’t want issues or problems to stack up on each other, and leaving these to future dates will often build up other issues. One issue to another and another. It’s most basically looking for the causes of the problem or determining why something does not function as expected and then finding the right solution how to solve the problem.

Here are some troubleshooting guides:

Troubleshooting guides are made to help you resolve an issue on your own by giving recommendations and step-by-step instructions. But first, is to identify what problem is showing up or already exists to be able to move forward and to find the right solution. This will also allow us to not build up another issue from an existing issue.

1. Incognito mode troubleshooting

If you have experienced difficulties when previewing or running your Bubble application, it is necessary to determine if it’s cookies-related or if it is about the cache stored on the browser. Incognito browsing mode will allow you to view the app as if it’s the first time it was visited. If issues do not reflect in private browsing mode, clear the stored cache and cookies in the browser. If the issue reflects in private browsing mode, please contact us.

To open your browser in Incognito mode:

Chrome: Press Ctrl + Shift + N on your keyboard (Cmd + Shift + N on Mac)
Safari: Press Cmd + Shift + N on your keyboard
Firefox: Press Ctrl + Shift + P on your keyboard (Cmd + Shift + P on Mac)
Microsoft Edge: Press Ctrl + Shift + N on your keyboard

2. Debugger tool for troubleshooting

If your app does not act as expected, you need to use some help from Debugger. This tool is made up of essential functions that will allow you to get into the small details of the app’s functionality. This will scan errors for you and know where things are having difficulties.

These functions include the following:

Workflow controls: this function will let you change workflow speeds, which are normal, slow, and step-by-step.
The Element Inspector: this is to help you inspect each element of the page to see details of the data being displayed.
The Warning Sign: this is an active notification that will prompt if the application has run-mode errors, is running into capacity constraints, and if you have accessed the application in Safe Mode.

This will let us test how our app works and detect where there might be something going wrong.

3. Using safe mode for troubleshooting

While they are not always the culprits of unexpected behavior, it is best practice to start investigating by ruling out custom code or third-party plugins as possible causes. To do so, you will want to run your application in safe mode.

The three options for safe mode are the following:

Safe – no custom HTML: Preview your page without any custom code
Safe – no community plugin: Preview your page without any plugins not built by Bubble
Safe – no community plugin or HTML: Preview your page none of the above

You can preview your app in safe mode by hovering over the preview button in your editor and waiting for the safe mode option menu to appear then by clicking on one of the safe mode options listed above.

On the other hand, you can activate safe mode through adding parameters to any of your application URL.

To run without community plugins, add the parameter ‘bubble_no_third_party_plugin=true’.Eg.’yourappname.com/page?debug_mode=true&bubble_no_third_party_plugin=true’.
To run without custom code add the parameter ‘bubble_safe_mode=true’.Eg.’yourappname.com/page?debug_mode=true&bubble_safe_mode=true’.

If running in either of the safe modes solves the problematic behavior, it is safe to assume that custom code or a third-party/community plugin is the cause of the behavior.

Conclusion:

Troubleshoot as you go. It will let your application stay healthier and more accurate for testing. Things will get smoother, and it will make it easier for you to develop long-term. However, if you find that no matter how you try following these guides, and yet you are still having trouble and issues do not resolve, you can always reach out to us here. Our bubble developers are the go-to guys for professional assistance.