I’ve been building full time on Bubble for a little over three years now. With the release of the new Native Mobile App Builder, I’m genuinely excited about the platform’s future. It’s a huge step forward and opens up serious possibilities for launching real native apps without leaving the Bubble ecosystem.
But alongside that excitement, I have some growing concerns, specifically around data handling limitations that Bubble has always struggled with.
Bubble has always struggled with robust sorting and filtering functionality, and this becomes especially problematic in mobile use cases, where performance and responsiveness are critical.
For example:
• There’s no way to sort a list by distance from a geo field like Current Geographic Position.
• We can’t dynamically sort by reference fields (e.g., sorting Properties by Owner’s Company Name).
• Filtering by child fields in referenced data types still requires workarounds, such as duplicating fields or denormalizing the database.
These aren’t edge cases…they’re basic requirements for building user-friendly apps for both web and mobile.
A mobile user expects to:
• See nearby locations ordered by proximity
• Filter results by nested or related field values
• Sort and filter lists fluidly without waiting on backend hacks or batch workflows
Right now, achieving these things in Bubble requires:
• Complex workflows
• Backend processing
• Temporary record creation for every user and location
• Plugins that aren’t yet supported in the new NativeBuilder environment
This is creating friction for app developers who want to build truly responsive, dynamic mobile and web experiences on Bubble.
If Bubble wants to compete with platforms like FlutterFlow, Draftbit, or even low-code stacks like Supabase + React Native, the core engine needs to be smarter when it comes to filtering, sorting, and working with relational data.
I genuinely love the Bubble platform, and I hope the launch of the mobile app builder shines a light on these long standing platform wide limitations and sparks more internal development in these critical areas.
Ideally, these filtering and sorting limitations would be addressed natively by Bubble rather than relying on third-party plugins, since this functionality is core to most applications, not a niche use case.
Curious to hear from others:
How are you approaching geo-based sorting?
Is this on Bubble’s roadmap?
