Unpredictable behaviour when duplicating components

💬 App Building
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1

When duplicating a component, it seems odd that properties such as the width, height etc. aren't persisted into the new component. This means that every time I want to add the next instance of a Container to a Stack, for example, I have to reset these settings to match the others.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks.

2

And potentially a related issue - would it be possible to make sure that duplicating a component inside a stack adds it either

a) after the duplicated component, or
b) at the end of the Stack?

Right now it seems to just add it randomly in the order, which is not very helpful.

3
  1. Width/height not persisting when duplicating a component (like a Container) is a known pain point. Unfortunately, there’s no setting to force these to copy over right now. It often resets size-related props, especially when inside responsive layouts like Stacks or Lists.
  2. For now, the best workaround is to set up one “template” container with the styles you want, then duplicate that carefully outside of a Stack first, or place it where you can reliably move it after.
  3. On your second point, yeah, you're right again. Duplicating a component inside a Stack sometimes places it in weird spots (not always after the original). There’s no guaranteed insert behavior right now, but I usually just drag the new one manually into place after duplication. Not ideal, but it's the cleanest option until they improve this.
4

Thanks @Anggita_Hayu. I will give duplicating outside the Stack a try.

We are running into so many of these small issues that cumulatively, the platform is becoming quite frustrating to work on - it would be good to know what is on the DevEx roadmap at Retool to deal with things like this, I hope we can get some input here!

5

Seems like even the workaround experiences the same problem - somewhere between creating the component outside and moving it into the stack, the height changes. Very frustrating!