Catalog Item Page Update Causing Issues With Loading, Extensions, Thumbnails, and UX

Bug Reports Roblox Application and Website Bugs
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#1

Overnight, Roblox rolled out an update to catalog item pages (roblox.com/catalog/ITEM_ID) that significantly affects loading behavior, extension compatibility, thumbnails, and user experience. The update doesn’t seem to introduce any visual improvements, and it’s unclear why this change was implemented given the resulting issues. Below are the key problems:

1. Skeleton Loader/Loading Behavior Issue

After the update, catalog item pages no longer have a proper skeleton loader or have a visually unappealing one. The page starts with the favorites star loading awkwardly, and then the rest of the content suddenly appears in a jarring manner.
Current behavior: Content abruptly loads with poor visual flow.


Expected behavior: Revert the loading experience to the previous smoother behavior or implement a proper skeleton loader for a polished UI.

(video taken from a content creator’s recent stream :sweat_smile:)

2. Broken Extension Functionality

The changes have broken many critical Roblox extensions that enhance developer workflows. Although this technically isn’t a Roblox bug, it’s inconvenient and disruptive for developers who rely on these extensions. Here are notable examples:

  • BTRoblox’s Asset Explorer by @AntiBoomz0r: The feature no longer shows on catalog item pages.
  • RoSeal by @juliaoverflow: The ‘copy shareable link’ option in the 3-dot menu has disappeared entirely.
  • Many other extensions that add extra functionality to the 3-dot menu are now completely broken.

Developers’ productivity and workflow have been negatively affected by these issues, and extension developers will take multiple days to develop and publish major fixes.

3. 3-Dot Menu Issue - Add to Profile Bug

The “Add to Profile” button now incorrectly appears on items that the user does not own. Clicking it results in a red banner error: “Failed to add to profile.” The button should only be visible when the user owns the item.

4. Thumbnails Not Loading

Thumbnails for catalog items frequently fail to load and instead get stuck in an infinitely loading state. It is unclear if this issue is related to the recent update, but it has become more common recently. I will attach console errors and item IDs when I encounter them again.

I encourage other users to reply to this report with any additional issues they have encountered since the update. It’s likely this report does not cover all the bugs introduced by the changes.

Engineers: any insight into the reasoning behind these changes (e.g., performance improvements, backend optimizations) would be appreciated. Understanding the purpose could help mitigate some of the confusion.

Relevant mentions: @BrightYellowElephant @misterpebblez @starhiker13

A private message is associated with this bug report

4 Likes
#2

Thanks for flagging this! We’re actively looking into the issue and will share more information with you as soon as we can.

  1. We are looking into fixing this with a proper skeleton loader to represent the loading state and have the rest of content pop in seamlessly without shifting other things around.

  2. We are sorry that our change has broken some popular browser extensions, please bring this to their attention so they can fix it.

  3. A fix for this just went out today, it is now fixed.

  4. The thumbnails might be a separate issue, nothing to do with our WebApp migration, but we will look into it. Thanks for bringing it up.

TLDR: we recently pushed out a change to have the item-details page render completely on the frontend, aka WebApp migration. This is supposed to make the web page feel more snappy and responsive as we load parts of the page incrementally without having to wait for another roundtrip call to our web servers every time user clicks on a new link.

3 Likes
BTRoblox Extension No Longer Works for Previewing Catalog Assets After Marketplace UI Updates
#3

Thanks a lot. Is improvement #1 expected to happen in the short term? If so, I won’t mark your reply as the solution so this report can remain open.

Also, another thing to note here: previously, moderated accessories that had not been fully deleted yet (redirecting to the main Catalog page) would show the text “This item has been moderated.” rather than “This item is off-sale”, etc etc. Very minor issue but it would be nice to have this updated to maintain the old behavior.

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#4

Yes improvement #1 is expected to happen in the short term. It should be released in the next couple of days. We will be keeping track of it.

moderated accessories that had not been fully deleted yet

Not sure what is this intermediate state that you are talking about here. I am only aware of moderated or moderation-approved items, Roblox should not be letting users view moderated items. Let me clarify with my colleagues.

2 Likes
#5

For context, there’s a brief time period (30-60s) after a catalog item is deleted, where the item page still shows but it says ‘This item has been moderated’ before it’s entirely deleted and redirects to the main catalog. This brief wait time is probably to allow all the APIs to sync up their data, I’m not too sure. I just know that for this brief time, it showed “This item has been moderated.” in place of the “This item is not currently for sale.” text before these changes. Again, not a big deal but just an FYI :slightly_smiling_face:

If you wanted to change the behavior here to make it more proper, you could make it instantly redirect to the catalog and remove the small wait time by detecting whatever API gives the ‘asset moderated’ response first (likely the one used to display the ‘moderated’ text).

Also, another issue if you’re interested: