Lovable App Not Working? How to Fix 17 Common Problems

Lovable is a really fun platform. It has a super sleek interface and you genuinely enjoy building stuff on it.

Until something breaks, and your Lovable app stops working. Every fix you try seems to create a new bug.

If you’re in the same boat, don’t worry. Below, we go over the most common Lovable problems; from code bugs to integration problems and authentication errors, along with advice on how to fix each one.

Chances are, yours is on the list. If it isn’t, reach out to us and we’ll take a look.

Lovable Preview Shows a Blank White Screen

The preview (or your live site) loads to an empty white page. Lovable’s docs say a blank preview usually comes from an error in the app itself, which means the app crashed before anything could render.

How to Fix

• Start with a refresh. Try these in order:
  1. Click Refresh above the preview.
  2. Hold Shift and click Refresh. This restarts the preview environment.
  3. Do a hard browser refresh: Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows, or Cmd+Shift+R on Mac.
• Open the preview in a new tab and press F12 to open the browser console. The red error at the top is the real cause. Paste it into the Lovable chat.
• If there’s no error to paste, describe what you see: “The preview is white, investigate and fix it.” That’s the wording Lovable’s own docs suggest.
• If the white screen started right after a change, revert to the previous version from History instead of stacking fixes on top of the broken one.
• Ask Lovable to add an error boundary and error handling around data loading. AI-generated apps often skip error handling on data calls, and that’s why so many of them show a white screen instead of an error message.

Lovable Keeps “Fixing” the Same Bug and Burning Credits

Lovable says it fixed the bug when in fact it didn’t. Fifteen prompts later, the app is worse and your credits are gone.

How to Fix

• Use Try to fix once or twice. You get 10 free fixes, and each one becomes available again after 24 hours. If you use all 10 before they reset, further fixes cost credits.
• After two failed attempts, switch to Plan mode. It costs 1 credit per message and never changes your code. Ask: “What is the root cause of this error? What have we already tried? Don’t change any code yet.”
• Start a fresh conversation after about three failed attempts. The longer the AI chases one bug, the more it repeats its own failed ideas. A clean start gives it a real chance to try something new.
• Write a better bug report outside Lovable. Use this guide to turn the error into a precise debugging prompt with ChatGPT or Claude.

Restoring an Old Version Doesn’t Bring Your App Back

You revert, but your pages are still missing or the data looks wrong. This hurts most after a big refactor, when weeks of work suddenly seem to be gone.

How to Fix

• A revertrestores only code. Your database data is not rolled back, so data and schema changes made after that version stay where they are.
• If the database changed after the version you restored, ask Lovable to compare the code with the current database schema and propose a migration to line them up. Read the SQL before you approve it.
• Connect GitHub early. Every Lovable change becomes a commit, so you get a full history outside Lovable that a developer can inspect or roll back.

Anyone Can Read Your Users’ Data

Your database might be accessible to anyone, even without logging in. In some cases, someone can use a few lines of code in their browser to see users’ emails, subscription plans, and Stripe customer IDs.

This usually happens because of weak row-level security (RLS) settings. RLS controls which data each user can access. But simply turning it on isn’t enough. A rule like USING (true) allows anyone to access the data, even if Lovable shows a green security shield.

How to Fix

• Run a Deep scan before you publish. The Quick scan that runs in the publish dialog doesn’t review your application code, and Lovable’s security docs say plainly that its tools “cannot guarantee complete security.”
• Open More → Cloud → Database → RLS policies (or Authentication → Policies in your own Supabase project) and read the policy on every table that holds user data. A policy that just says true on a user table is a red flag.
• Test it yourself. Log in as user A and copy the URL of something that belongs to them. Log in as user B and open that URL. Then try it again logged out.
• Search your code for service_role. That key skips every RLS rule, so it must never appear in browser code.
• Remember that anything in a VITE_ variable ends up in the browser. The Supabase URL and publishable key are meant to be public. Stripe secret keys, OpenAI keys, and similar are not.
• If you’re a workspace admin, turn on Block publishing with critical issues.

For a broader walkthrough, see our post on checking whether your vibe-coded app is a security risk.

”New Row Violates Row-Level Security Policy” (Error 42501)

Your form submits, but nothing gets saved, and the above error appears. This happens because RLS blocks the action.

How to Fix

• Never accept “disable RLS” as the fix. Ask for a policy that lets a logged-in user write their own rows and nothing else.
• Check that the user is actually logged in when the insert runs. Supabase’s RLS docs point out that auth.uid() returns null for logged-out users, so a policy like auth.uid() = user_id quietly fails for them.
• Check that the insert sets user_id to the current user’s ID. A missing or wrong user_id fails the check every time.
• A typical insert policy looks like this:

create policy "Users can insert their own orders"
on public.orders
for insert
to authenticated
with check ((select auth.uid()) = user_id);

• If updates fail, you also need a SELECT policy on that table. Supabase’s docs say an UPDATE needs a matching SELECT policy to work.
• If the error happens on file uploads, remember that storage has its own policies. The bucket needs an upload policy too.

Lovable Authentication Errors (Login Breaks on Your Live Site)

Sign-in works in the editor. On your published app or custom domain, it fails, loops, or sends people to the wrong address.

This is one of the most common Lovable authentication errors, and the cause is almost always a URL setting.

How to Fix

• On Lovable Cloud, the Site URL updates automatically when you publish, and your custom domain is added when it goes live. If login still doesn’t work, go to Auth settings → Advanced → Redirect URLs and add your domain.
• If you’re using your own Supabase project, you’ll need to set this up manually. Go to Authentication → URL Configuration, set the Site URL to your live website address, and add all your domains (including www and your lovable.app address) under Redirect URLs.
• If you use Google sign-in with your own OAuth credentials, add the new domain’s redirect URI in Google Cloud Console. It has to match exactly. A trailing slash, or www versus no www, is enough to break it.

Confirmation and Password Reset Emails Go to localhost or Never Arrive

New users click the confirmation link and land on localhost:3000, or the email never shows up at all. Both happen a lot on Supabase projects that kept their default settings.

How to Fix

• Change the Site URL. In Supabase it starts out as http://localhost:3000, and it’s the address your confirmation and reset emails fall back to. Set it to your live domain under Authentication → URL Configuration.
• Set up custom SMTP before launch. Supabase’s built-in email service is for testing only. Send through a service like Resend or Postmark on your own domain. On Lovable Cloud, the custom emails feature does the same job.

Your Published Site Doesn’t Show Your Latest Changes

The preview has your changes but the live site doesn’t. The reason for this is that Lovable doesn’t publish automatically. The live site is a snapshot from your last publish.

How to Fix

• Click Publish, then Publish changes. A dot on the Publish button means you have unpublished changes.
• Page titles, descriptions, and social images also only reach the live site when you publish.
• If the dialog shows Build errors need fixing, your latest version doesn’t build. Fix the error, confirm the preview works, then publish.
• If you published and still see the old version, open the site in a private window to rule out your browser’s cache.

Your Custom Domain Is Stuck on “Verifying” or Shows the Old Site

You added the DNS records hours ago and the domain still isn’t Live. Or it’s Live, but visitors see your old website.

How to Fix

• Go to Project → Settings → Domains and check that your DNS records match Lovable’s instructions. If you bought your domain elsewhere, you’ll need an A record pointing to 185.158.133.1 and a TXT record named _lovable (or _lovable.yoursubdomain) with a lovable_verify= value. See Lovable’s custom domain guide for details.
• Remove any old or conflicting A, AAAA, or CNAME records for your domain, while keeping the records Lovable requires. Pay particular attention to AAAA records, as outdated ones can direct visitors to your old website.
• If the status says Stalled or Failed, check for CAA records. They must allow at least one of Lovable’s certificate issuers (pki.goog, letsencrypt.org, or ssl.com). Then click Retry.
• Check your records with a public DNS lookup tool such as dnschecker.org. DNS changes can take up to 72 hours, though most go through within a few hours.

Your Site Doesn’t Show Up on Google

You search for your website on Google, but it doesn’t appear. The problem may be how Lovable loads your pages.

Older Lovable apps relied on JavaScript to display content, making them harder for search engines to read. Lovable changed this in 2026. Projects created from May 13, 2026 use server-side rendering, while older projects now serve search engines pre-rendered pages.

How to Fix

• Run the SEO & AI search review in your project and fix what it flags: a missing sitemap, a robots.txt that blocks crawlers, duplicate titles, and placeholder descriptions. Every page needs its own title, description, and Open Graph tags.
• Publish first, then connect Google Search Console (you can do it from the project chat) and submit your sitemap. Google fetches it from your live site, so an unpublished sitemap won’t work.
• Use URL Inspection in Search Console on your most important pages to see what Google actually sees.

GitHub Sync Stops Working or Overwrites Your Changes

You enabled GitHub sync but changes aren’t flowing as seamlessly across the two platforms as you’d anticipated.

How to Fix

• Know the rules. Lovable syncs one branch at a time, usually main. Pushes to other branches don’t show up until you switch the project to that branch.
• If your commits are missing, check that you pushed to the synced branch. If a push didn’t trigger a sync, push any new commit to that branch. An empty one works: git commit --allow-empty -m "sync".
• If you see a lovable-sync branch, it means GitHub rejected changes from Lovable, so Lovable saved them in a separate branch. Review those changes and merge them into your synced branch. A lovable-fallback branch means the original synced branch was deleted from GitHub.
• If you’re also using Cursor or Claude Code, make your changes on a separate branch and merge them into main when they’re ready. This prevents Lovable and your other coding tools from making conflicting changes to the same files.

Your App 404s or Goes Blank After Moving to Vercel or Netlify

The app works on Lovable. On Vercel or Netlify, the homepage loads, but refreshing any other page gives a 404 or a white screen. Or the app loads and can’t reach its database.

How to Fix

• Add a fallback rewrite so every route serves index.html. If you are on Netlify (or Cloudflare Pages), add a _redirects file to the public folder containing this code: /* /index.html 200.

  On Vercel, add a vercel.json file like this:

  {
    "rewrites": [{ "source": "/(.*)", "destination": "/index.html" }]
  }

• If it’s a TanStack Start project, a 404 can mean the host is only serving static files. These apps need their server part running too.

If you’re still deciding on a hosting for your app, our guide on where to host your vibe-coded app walks through the options.

”Failed to Send a Request to the Edge Function”

A feature that calls your backend (AI, email, payments) fails with this generic message.

How to Fix

• Read the function’s logs before you prompt anything. On Lovable Cloud, go to More → Cloud → Logs, pick Function logs or Edge logs, and filter to errors.
• Check that every secret the function needs (API keys, webhook secrets) exists in Secrets, with exactly the name the code uses.
• If the browser console also shows a CORS error, the function isn’t answering the browser’s preflight check. Ask Lovable to handle OPTIONS requests and return CORS headers, following the pattern in Supabase’s CORS guide.
• Check whether the function expects a logged-in user. Edge Functions require a valid login token (JWT) by default, so calls from logged-out pages or outside services get rejected.
• If your Cloud backend is paused (for example, because you ran out of credits), every function fails. See the Cloud bill section below.

Stripe Takes the Payment, but the App Doesn’t Unlock

The customer completes their payment, and Stripe confirms the charge. But the app still keeps them on the free plan.

How to Fix

• If you’re using Lovable’s Stripe integration, make sure the customer’s login email matches their email in Stripe. Lovable uses this to identify their subscription.

• If you’ve set up a webhook and Stripe shows a 401 error, your app may be blocking Stripe’s payment notifications because they don’t have a login token. To fix this, turn off JWT verification for the webhook only in supabase/config.toml:

  [functions.stripe-webhook]
  verify_jwt = false

• Make sure your webhook still verifies that notifications genuinely come from Stripe. Use Stripe’s signature verification with the original request body, as shown in Supabase’s example. Without this check, someone could send fake payment notifications and unlock paid features.

• If the problem continues, compare Developers → Logs in Stripe with your app’s function logs to find where the payment process is failing.

Your Lovable Cloud Bill Keeps Climbing, or Your App Says Services Are Paused

You’ve finished building, but credits keep draining. Or your app’s services stop working.

How to Fix

• Understand how billing works. Building, hosting, Cloud, and AI features inside your app all draw from one credit balance. Every plan gets 20 Cloud credits and 4 AI credits a month. After that, usage comes out of your general credits.
• Know what happens at zero. Your published site stays live, but apps that depend on the built-in backend can pause until you add credits. The page loads. Anything that touches the database doesn’t.
• Find what’s eating credits in More → Cloud → Usage, which splits spend into database, AI, compute, network, storage, and realtime. The culprit is usually one thing writing a row on every click, or a page that re-queries the database on every render.
• Right-size your instance. Larger instances use more credits per hour, and Lovable shows estimated monthly credits for each size before you switch.
• Delete stored files you don’t need (they cost credits even while the backend is paused) and review any scheduled Jobs.
• Set a spend cap and a low-balance alert in Workspace settings → Usage limits & alerts. It’s available on all paid plans.
• If the numbers still don’t work, moving to your own Supabase project is an option (see the last section).

Your App Gets Slow (or Breaks) Once Real Users Arrive

Your app worked fine with a small number of users. But as more people started using it, the experience became slower and buggy.

How to Fix

• Ask Lovable to find your slowest queries. On your own Supabase project, you can use the Performance Advisor in the dashboard for the same purpose.
• Add indexes to the columns you filter and sort by. Without an index, Postgres reads every row in the table to answer a query.
• Stop sending whole tables to the browser. Generated code often fetches every row with select('*') and filters in JavaScript. Filter in the query, request only the columns you need, and paginate every list.
• Speed up your RLS policies. Write (select auth.uid()) instead of auth.uid() so it runs once per query instead of once per row, and index the columns your policies check.
• On your own Supabase project, if you see connection errors under load, route server-side traffic through the connection pooler instead of direct database connections.

Our production readiness checklist covers the rest of what to check before a launch.

You Want to Move Off Lovable Cloud

Until recently, moving your data out of Lovable Cloud was difficult. There was no official export option, so you had to find workarounds or rely on support. Lovable now offers a data export feature which makes the process easier.

How to Fix

• Export your data from More → Cloud → Overview → Advanced settings → Export project data. According to Lovable’s docs, you get the full database (structure and data), including user accounts with their password hashes.
• The export doesn’t include storage files, Edge Function code, or secrets. Download your storage files separately and keep a copy of every secret.
• Mind the export limits. Lovable Cloud supports database exports up to 15 GB, with a maximum export file size of 5 GB. You can only export once every 24 hours, and your backend must be running. If it’s paused, restart it before exporting.
• After you export and set up the new backend, test everything on a temporary URL (sign-in, reads, writes, and uploads) before you switch the domain. Only then click Remove Lovable Cloud. It permanently deletes the instance, and you can’t download exports after that. Also note that signed-in users will need to log in again after the move.
• Even if you’re staying on Cloud, run the export now and then as a backup.

Wrapping Up

This wraps up our Lovable troubleshooting guide. We hope it helps you get your app back to a working state, and keep it there.

If your Lovable app still isn’t behaving after all this, or you’d like someone to check it before launch, we can help. We fix, secure, and stabilize Lovable apps so they can thrive in production. Take a look at Fix My Vibe Code, or book yourself a free consultation.