Hey everyone,
I’m Nick, a product manager at Bubble.
This morning, the API Connector has been moved from a hidden plugin to its own tab in the Editor!
The main goals for this update include increasing the discoverability of the API connector, adding light interface improvements, and making technical investments for easier future iterations. Over the next few months, we’d love to get your feedback on other improvements you’d like to see.
Why we’re doing this
We know that connecting your app to external services is critical to building a real business. Whether you’re integrating the latest AI models from OpenAI or Anthropic, setting up payments with Stripe, or connecting to any other third-party service, the API Connector is how you make it happen without writing code.
But we also know the API Connector has been way too hard to discover. You had to know to navigate to the plugin marketplace and install it like any other plugin. It never felt like the core feature it actually is. We’re taking a small, but important step today: Moving the API Connector to the editor.
Improving the discoverability of the API Connector
New location
The API Connector is no longer a plugin. It’s now a dedicated tab in your left navigation bar, sitting right above Styles and below Data.
The tab is page-agnostic, so you can start building your integrations at any point in your app creation process without needing to reload the editor!
Please note that API connections made in the new tab interface and the old plugin interface are linked, so changes made in either location will be reflected in both locations.
Interface updates
Here are the main changes that you’ll notice:
- Left sidebar: An index of all your API Collections (formerly called “API Names”) with nested items showing individual API calls.
- Main workspace: The main API call setup area is now organized into sections for configuring the shared collection settings, setting up calls, and seeing their responses.
Some more specific improvements worth calling out:
- We brought more information out of the call and into the left nav so you can easily know which call is which at a glance with info like is it used as an action or data, what HTTP method is it using, and have you yet initialized it.
- We moved the initialized response onto the main page instead of a modal. You can now reference it without having to reinitialize the call every time.
- We restructured the default view, so you can now see shared headers on top of each individual API call to keep context where it’s relevant.
- We brought the import cURL feature up to the top of the call and to the level of prominence it deserves. Try prompting the Bubble AI agent or your favorite LLM for an API call you would like to make as a curl command and paste the command into the input.
Note: If you prefer the old interface, you can use the API Connector plugin instead; it’s still there in the plugins tab for now.
What’s next
We know there is more work to do, including improving the actual experience of defining the API call body and important capability gaps. Over the next few months, we’d love your feedback about the other improvements we should consider making to the API Connector in this thread, on the Ideaboard, or via support channels.
Huge thank you to our Bubble Ambassador community for testing this first version and sharing feedback that we’re already using to plan our future roadmap.
As of right now, we’re exploring capabilities such as:
- Searching through your list of API collections
- Reordering API collections with drag-and-drop functionality
- Adding UI improvements to the main call setup
- Adding notes functionality for both API calls and collections
The API Connector is such an essential part of what makes Bubble powerful. This is the first step towards highlighting how it’s a first-class feature for our users.
Look forward to hearing your feedback and ideas!
Nick
Thanks for the update 
I guess.
(see e.g., below)