Bubble: the list is full in the editor and empty in the live app
A repeating group, dropdown or profile section is populated when you preview as yourself, and blank — or shows rows with every field missing — for a logged-out visitor or an ordinary user account.
- Bubble
- Forms & leads
- Auth & login
Root cause, in plain English
Bubble applies privacy rules to the data the browser receives, not to what the editor shows you. When a rule does not grant a field to the current user, the search still returns the record but arrives with that field stripped out. The group renders the right number of rows and no visible content. Previewing as an admin hides this completely, because your own account satisfies every rule.
How to fix it
Reproduce as the real audience first: open the live app in a private window, logged out, or as a test user with no special roles. Never diagnose this while previewing as yourself.
Open Data, then Privacy, and read the rule that matches the data type. Check which fields are ticked under "View all fields" for the condition your test user satisfies.
Tick the specific fields the page needs to display. Grant fields, not whole types — the point of the rule is that everything else stays hidden.
If no rule matches your test user at all, add an explicit condition for them. A data type with rules defined but none matching returns records with nothing readable.
Re-check every nested repeating group separately: an inner group reads a different data type and needs its own grant.
Go deeper: the full guide to Bubble workflows that stop running.
How Nightlamp detects this automatically
- Browser journey
- Keyword check
- Visual snapshot
A browser_journey signs in as a real test user and asserts that the list actually contains rows, which is the only way to see what a logged-out visitor sees — the page returns HTTP 200 either way, so a status check cannot catch it. An http_keyword monitor watches for text that must appear on the rendered page, and visual_snapshot flags the layout collapsing when the content disappears.
Catch this before your customers do
Nightlamp runs these checks continuously against your live app and sends a plain-English diagnosis — not a wall of logs — the moment this pattern shows up.
Related patterns
Frequently asked questions
- Why does it work in preview but not on the live app?
- Preview runs as your logged-in editor account, which typically satisfies every privacy condition you have written. The live app serves visitors who satisfy none of them. The rules are working exactly as configured — the configuration just does not cover real users.
- The rows appear but every field is blank. Is that a different bug?
- No, it is the same cause at a finer grain. The rule grants the record but not the fields, so the search returns the right count with the content removed. A group that shows the correct number of empty rows is the clearest fingerprint of a field-level privacy gap.
- Should I just turn privacy rules off to fix it?
- No. Removing the rule exposes the whole data type to anyone who can call your app's API, which is a far worse outcome than a blank list. Grant the specific fields the page renders and leave the rest restricted.
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