Fix Bubble's Dropdown Placeholder Bug (UX Improvement)

Showcase Plugins
1

If you’ve ever used Bubble’s native dropdown, you’ve probably run into this annoying issue:

After selecting an option and then clearing it, the placeholder disappears — leaving a blank, confusing field.

This can hurt your app’s UX, especially in filters, forms, or search components where clarity is key.

So I created a simple plugin that solves this exact problem — and it’s 100% for free.
Just drop it into your app, insert dropdown’s ID, write the placeholder you want and it will behave the way it should.

Here’s how it looks without the plugin (top) vs with the plugin (bottom) for a dropdown listing the days of the week:

dropdown - plugin
dropdown - plugin385×245 1.71 KB

:link: Get the plugin here
:speech_balloon: Feel free to leave feedback or ideas for improvement!

4 Likes
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Thanks! That’s great to not have to do the code for this. Makes it simpler for my clients. I will try it out. :blush:

1 Like
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Thanks!!! Tell me your thoughts later :slight_smile:

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I just reset the dropdown when the value is blank. Never needed to use any workarounds.

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Actually, you are spending WUs without necessity - you could do the same processing client-side with a solution like this.

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What do you mean spending WU. Why would resetting a dropdown cost WU?

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Hey bro i have a problem with your plugin, when i unchecked visible on page load for your blocks, its doesnt work do you have any issue ?

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if you uncheck “visible”, you are necessarily saying to Bubble “don’t run this code”. it’s not an issue, you have to make it visible.

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I’ve never tested this and assume @adamrsousa has and perhaps it is that if the dropdown is providing a list of data entries via a ‘do search for’ the resetting might cause the search to run again, but I’m not sure, maybe @adamrsousa can clarify.

1 Like
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It’s exactly it, @boston85719 !

@ihsanzainal84 sorry, thought I had replied to your question before.

My solution is simple but avoids running a Do Search For every time the user clears a dropdown that has a table as Data Source. But if it’s an Option Set (or the list is cached), there’s no difference.

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Resetting only does another search if the results would change