I run into an issue reasonably frequently where I’m unable to move any components on the canvas. Clicking and dragging elements does nothing, they appear frozen in place. I can move new elements into the canvas and place them in roughly the right place, but any existing elements on the screen are now fixed.
I end up having to scrap the work and start over.
I can cut and paste them to try to re-order, but not only is this tedious, it's also unpredictable. When I try to paste below a specific element, it often ends up somewhere unexpected instead.
I've done all of these to see if this fixes the issue, but nothing seems to change this.
Refreshed the page
Logged out and logged back in
Cleared browser cache
Reset app and component state
Switched browsers (Chrome to Safari)
Retool Cloud
Behavior is consistent across multiple apps and pages.
Note: As a new user, I can't add a screen recording to show the issue.
I'm having the same issue on my current project. It's only happening within some components, stacks especially. I cannot easily reorder components within a stack.
Do you either of you have an app export you can share with our team?
We are tracking feedback of this happening specifically within stack containers, but would love to know if you're also seeing this issue outside of stacks
I have the same issue. It looks like this issue is almost a year old.!
These kind of fundamental quality issues should be picked up, not deferred for a year. We are actively looking at alternatives. It seems that retool is not taking the quality of its application seriously and addressing some core issues.
The interface is really buggy. I think there are some underlying design issues there. You can not have multiple overlapping graphics, for example the manual grid to resize and the grip to move frequently overlap.
You don’t have a tree that you can drag and drop components. EVERY no code builder has this. Look at Figma, weweb, anything else out there! The reason its in every app is because its a fundamental part of designing visually.
On top of that the copy and paste is really buggy. Its especially buggy when it comes to nested layout.
Overall as someone who has used other no-code builders, worked with figma and also worked on some of the newer ai based builders out there like Claude design and builder.io, the experience that the retool team has put together is just completely sub-par.
If it takes me 30 min to try to get a button into the right position, this is not a time saver and something that removed friction from the development experience. Its something that adds to it!
Thanks for the feedback, @benjaminfortunato! There are two specific updates that may be of interest to you:
we are actively working on enabling drag-and-drop within the component tree, which will be especially useful when working with stacks
the closed beta for our new layout system is just a few weeks away and should specifically address most of the concerns in this thread while also retaining parity
To the latter point, let me know if you are interested in participating!
Hey @rootrigo - I'm sorry to hear that! I'll see if I can get you on the list. In the meantime, though, hopefully we can unblock you.
Are you working with a particularly large app? Or making extensive use of stacks? It might be useful to have you join Office Hours next week, if the timing works for you.
I saw the new marketing video on the retool site. It looks like this new setup works with cursor? I’d definitely be interested in participating. We are in the process of building out the customer facing front-end using builder.io, but if there is a way for us to put together back end internal apps where bespoke ui is not as critical quickly that would be great.
The space is evolving so fast I just don’t know what is quicker, building from scratch with buildper.io, claude design etc or using a framework like retool. Right now the issue with retools positioning system and AI would make me lean towards using AI with claude / builder and cursor.
I had to create a custom grid based table from scratch from retool components and it ended up taking a couple of days, wiring up all the different components, fighting the positioning tool. I will let you know how out custom front end development goes but I feel like this could have been done in half a day with other ai tools. Other than the positioning tools lacking, the ai is a 50-50 crap shoot. It can do some stuff, or corrupt your app or just produce garbage.
Hopefully the new system also works better with AI or integrates better with some of the exiting tool like claude code. claude design, or cursor? Maybe we can actually assign that work to an agent instead of doing all this tedious work manually?
If I had to do a large scale refactor, lets say we changed the payload shape of some of the core backend api, I would spend a couple of days of manual work for me to make all those changes across the retool app. With Cursor I could assign that task to an agent and then have that agent make those changes across the application using jest tests for validation.
With retool I’d keeping the payload the same instead of refactoring to avoid those time consuming front end changes. Its nice in the early stages of app development to have the freedom to make broad breaking changes and know that you can get the app back in line in a day.
More news coming soon! You shouldn't have to wait too long. The new builder is a pretty massive step forward, so I'm excited to get feedback from you and others that have been active in the community.
In the meantime, though, hopefully we can unblock you.
The new builder is a pretty massive step forward, so I'm excited to get feedback from you and others that have been active in the community.