Hi everyone,
This is the September community update. You can read last month’s update here.
The energy at Bubble HQ has been incredible lately. The team is working hard on bringing our AI vision to life and taking native mobile to the next level — it’s exciting to see the progress we’re making on both fronts. We’ll have official updates to share with you during our Bubble Tour events in October, and I can’t wait to show you what we’ve been building. If you’re near Paris or London, get your ticket! For everyone else, don’t worry — we’ll be sharing all the replays and recaps so you’ll hear the news too.
One big reminder that starting today, you can officially choose a native mobile pricing plan so that your deployed apps stay live once plans become required on October 1. You won’t be charged until October, but by opting in to a plan now, you can guarantee your app’s users won’t see a service disruption.
What we shipped last month
We made some significant behind-the-scenes improvements to database performance that should make a big difference for apps with especially large data sets or those that have experienced slow queries: specifically, around 50% faster database searches, up to 90% faster deletions, plus faster insertions and fewer query timeouts. We got there by adjusting the way Bubble apps’ databases are indexed, including fixing some inefficiencies and cleaning up and standardizing other aspects of the indexing process on our side.
For our Enterprise customers, we rolled out six new releases designed to help your business scale faster and more reliably on Bubble. These include 24/7 support, a higher uptime SLA plus an even higher availability configuration, database storage auto-scaling, our new trust center, and new dedicated regions. You can read all about these new capabilities here.
The agency directory is now the experts directory, and coaches (those who help teach clients how to build their own apps) are now included alongside agencies and freelancers (those who build apps for their clients). If you fall into that second category, you can also now specify whether you’re an agency or a freelancer to help the right clients find you more easily. We also streamlined the RFP flow based on your feedback. Next up, we’re working to prioritize additional improvements like refining the payment flow people use to book coaches and incorporating ratings and reviews.
The toggle for the expression parentheses feature has been moved from “experimental features” to general settings. This feature allows you to write expressions with parentheses for clearer logic. It’s been working great for a while now, so we officially graduated it out of beta.
We shipped several improvements to Bubble AI. When you start a prompt from our website, we have some example prompts to help inspire you. Now, those appear in the prompt box that you see when you’re logged in, too. More elements are now fully supported in AI-generated apps, including multi-select dropdowns, searchable dropdowns, and radio buttons. And finally, you’ll now see logos that Bubble AI generates right in the editor, not just in preview (previously it showed an expression in the editor).
We also rolled out a couple of Bubble Boosts. We improved the efficiency of “trigger a custom event when data changes,” which could manifest as WU savings for you, depending on how your app uses this workflow. Also, the expression composer now gives you visual confirmation that a literal value is accepted. In other words, say you had an expression like “email address isn’t: me@me.com.” That email address is a literal value. Now, when you type it in, you’ll be able to click on your text in the drop-down so you know it’s saved and valid.
As mentioned last month, we recently streamlined our bug report process. Thanks to your reports, the following bugs were fixed this month:
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If you had a popup element open in the design tab, the app search tool would show behind it instead of in front of it. Now it properly appears in front.
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If you signed up via a third-party connection like your Google or Facebook login, the AI prompt box would clear itself. Now it retains your prompt.
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AI app generation sometimes failed after a high number of refinement prompts. We truncated previous prompt history to fix it.
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When a custom event was triggered twice in a row, the event value was not always updating correctly the second time. Now it is.
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Now that buttons can have an icon and a label, icons were not always following timing instructions for element transitions. For example, if you programmed a button to transition from one color to another after 3 seconds, the icon may not have followed the rest of the button. Now the icons follow instructions as intended.
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The page manager didn’t always refresh in a timely manner when switching between branches. Now it does.
What we’re working on
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AI
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Most of the AI team is heads-down on bringing conversational editing capabilities into the editor. This is the next big step in our AI vision — being able to tell Bubble what you want to change and having it happen instantly while you maintain full control. We’re internally testing now and are still on track to bring its first iteration to you this year.
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We’re also making good progress on getting ready to get the native mobile AI app generation feature in people’s hands for testing — internal testing is happening now.
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Native mobile
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In September, we’ll be releasing a feature to make it easy for end-users to reset their passwords directly in your mobile app. Magic login link support is also in progress, slated for October. These two features lay important groundwork for the broader deep-linking feature that the team has planned.
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We’re also making more improvements to the native mobile deploy flow. Specifically, we’re giving you real-time confirmation that your App Store developer connection keys are valid. Before, you wouldn’t have known whether they were correct until your build was successfully packaged for the app stores (or not).
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We’re aiming to test in-app purchases with a select group of users in mid-October, and we’re also still making progress on the mobile plugin editor, which is expected to hit beta in Q4.
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Stability
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We had an incident on August 21 that resulted in an outage of about 45 minutes when our internal load balancer had some connection issues with core servers. One of the main factors that led to those connection issues was an outdated piece of infrastructure — and so we’re removing it and replacing it with a simpler, modern alternative. That work will be complete by September 17.
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Removing it will also eliminate the need for hostname and DNS changes when we balance loads across servers, which increases stability further. A byproduct of this change will be an update to the way we generate your app’s editor URL. Instead of appearing as bubble.io/page?id=[appname] or d100.bubble.io/page?id=[appname], it will appear as [appname].editor.bubble.io.
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The property editor
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With user interviews complete, we’re full steam ahead working on a complete redesign of the property editor. The changes will make it easier to use and more intuitive, especially for people learning Bubble for the first time. It will also be anchoring it in the sidebar, as you may be familiar with from products like Figma.
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We’re working toward a closed alpha in October and a public beta in early November, during which everyone will be able to test it out, give us your feedback, and start integrating it into your daily workflow.
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The table element is going out of beta. We’re excited to finally send the table element to GA with the addition of a few key highly requested improvements:
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You’ll be able to add pagination and stipulate how many rows you want to display per page
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You’ll be able to make footer rows sticky
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You’ll get all the same workflow actions as you get with repeating groups (display list, go to page, etc)
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You’ll be able to set alternating row colors
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We’ll be updating fields in the ideaboard’s submission form in September. The new fields will give us deeper insights into trends and themes in your pain points so we can act on your feedback more quickly and strategically. You can expect to hear more from me in response to your ideas in future monthly updates.
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We’re working on letting you view your WU usage by web vs mobile by October 1. This has been a common question since mobile launched — “how much of my usage is coming from mobile vs. web?” — and we want to give you that visibility so you can make informed decisions about your app architecture and pricing plans.
Get involved
Applications for our next Bubble Ambassadors cohort will open soon! This is a huge opportunity to connect with the top 0.1% of our community and make your voices heard at Bubble. Bubble Ambassadors alpha and beta test early product releases, participate in feedback sessions with our PMs and engineers, get fast troubleshooting with the team via priority communications channels, and share community sentiment during new releases. If you’re ready to make an impact on the future of Bubble and no-code in 2025, keep your eyes on our social channels and email newsletters.
ICYMI
A huge congratulations to our Summer Mobile App Challenge winners:
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Best iOS app: Scanimal, an app “designed to deliver vegan clarity beyond the label”
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Best Android app: Tiny Emotions, an app that provides “an accessible and engaging way for children to learn about emotions”
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Best companion to a web app: Zula Kids, which “makes storytime more inclusive, multilingual, and fun, wherever you are”
But truly, everyone who submitted deserves congratulations — one of the qualifications was successfully getting your app listed in either the App Store or Google Play, which is no small feat. We loved seeing the incredible apps you built!
Finally, the team recently filmed an awesome interview with Think Cater, a catering and events platform that handles everything from vendor management to event logistics. You can watch the whole thing here.
New hires
We had five new people join the team this month! Big welcome to:
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Lindsay, associate product manager
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Eliza, software engineer II
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Josie, technical recruiter
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Janice, senior software engineer
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PJ, associate Bubble Developer
That’s all for this month!
— Josh and Emmanuel
