How to Use Bubble's Visual Editor to Design User Interfaces

The Bubble editor has a left sidebar with tabs: Design, Workflow, Data, Styles, Plugins, Settings, and Logs. The Design tab is where you build your UI. The center area is your page canvas where you drag and drop elements. On the right side, the Property Editor appears when you select any element, showing tabs for Appearance, Layout, and Conditional formatting. At the top, the Pages dropdown lets you switch between pages. The Element Tree panel on the left shows all elements in a nested hierarchy. Spend a minute clicking through each tab to familiarize yourself.

Click the Design tab to enter the visual builder. To add elements, click the plus icon or search bar at the top of the element palette. Common elements include Text, Button, Input, Image, Group, Repeating Group, and Icon. Click an element name to add it, then click on the canvas where you want it placed. Alternatively, drag the element from the palette directly to the desired position. Every element you add appears in the Element Tree on the left. Double-click text elements to edit their content inline.

Groups are container elements that hold other elements inside them. Bubble offers four layout types for groups: Column (stacks children vertically), Row (arranges children horizontally), Fixed (absolute positioning), and Align to Parent (positions on a 9-point grid). For most layouts, use Column for page sections and Row for horizontal arrangements like navigation bars or card grids. Add a Group from the element palette, then drag other elements into it. The Element Tree shows the nesting hierarchy clearly — you can also drag elements in the Tree to rearrange their parent-child relationships.

Select any element to open the Property Editor on the right. The Appearance tab controls visual properties: background color, border, font, corner rounding, and shadows. The Layout tab controls size and spacing: min/max width and height, padding, and margin. The Conditional tab lets you change any property based on a condition, like changing a button's color when it is hovered. Use the Styles tab in the left sidebar to create reusable style definitions — define a style once and apply it to multiple elements for consistent design across your app.

Bubble's responsive engine is built on CSS Flexbox. Key responsive properties on each element include: Min width and Max width to control how elements resize, Fit width to content to shrink a container to its children's size, and Collapse when hidden to remove invisible elements from the layout flow. Use the responsive preview at the top of the editor to check your page at different screen sizes — mobile portrait, landscape, tablet, and desktop. At each breakpoint, you can customize visibility, layout, and styling. Set a Group to Row layout with wrapping enabled so cards stack vertically on mobile.