🦄 Stop Realtime Updates (save WU!)

Showcase Plugins
1

Hey folks!

We’ve released a new free NQU plugin: Stop Realtime Updates.

This one is for Bubble pages that are subscribed to data that changes a lot: admin tables, operational dashboards, job queues, logs, audit trails, repeating groups, that kind of thing.

Sometimes the user does not need every live update pushed into the browser. They just need a stable page while they review, filter, bulk edit, or leave the tab open.

Realtime updates cause churn and higher workload usage when things change a lot, on data the user is viewing. This is particularly common for ERPs, internal tools, and admin panels.

Try it out:

What it does

  • Auto-pause after inactivity - drop the helper element on a page and pause realtime updates after the user has been inactive.
  • Dynamic idle timeout - set the inactive minutes from a dynamic number, so different users or pages can use different thresholds.
  • Restore when the user returns - automatically reconnect realtime updates when the user clicks, types, scrolls, focuses the page, or returns to the tab.
  • Pause and unpause from workflows - explicitly pause the whole page during bulk edits, imports, review sessions, or other sensitive flows.
  • Control selected Things - unsubscribe and resubscribe realtime updates for a list of Thing unique IDs, useful for visible table rows.
  • Unsubscribe for specific elements - unsubscribes specific searches/data sources rather than Things

Why we built it

Bubble’s realtime updates are useful, but on high-churn data types they can create a lot of browser-side churn.

If an admin table is watching rows that update constantly, the browser can keep receiving updates even when the user only needs a snapshot. This plugin gives you a few simple levers to stop that from happening in the current browser tab.

A couple of notes

This is web-only, and it affects the current browser page context. On refresh, it will be reset.

It will not affect workflows. This means that it introduces the possibility that what the user sees on the page is different from what is ‘true’ in Bubble. However, this should not introduce bugs (unless your existing implementation is already depending on the client side data and insecure).

It is not a magic “make all WU disappear” button. Writes, backend workflows, searches, and API calls still cost what they cost. The plugin helps with avoidable realtime refresh work on pages where live updates are not always needed.

It’s completely free.

Happy building!

2

Not just seized workflow units but also helps keep the page static when an item is edited and the filter would exclude that row!

3

Yes. Realtime updates will generally still persist if you modify a thing in a frontend workflow which is nice. So this just gives you more flexibility.

Do most apps need this? No

But are there specific problematic screens on some apps that are causing problems? Yes, so this should help those!