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Troubleshooting

Fix a blank or incomplete session replay

Diagnose why a session replay renders blank, freezes, or drops events, and learn how to get a fuller recording next time.

Applies toWhere:Web appExtension

A session replay is a reconstructed recording of the page's DOM, not a video. That makes it lightweight and privacy-safe, but it also means some things simply cannot be redrawn. If your replay is blank, freezes, or skips the moment you cared about, the cause is usually one of a few known limits. Use the tree below to find yours.

Diagnose the blank replay

Match your symptom
  • The whole replay is blank from the very first frame.
    Likely cause: Capture started late, so the extension never took an initial DOM snapshot of the page.

    Reproduce the bug again with recording running from the moment the page loads. Start the extension first, then trigger the steps. If the replay is still blank, reload the page before recording so a fresh DOM snapshot is captured. See how instant replay works for how snapshots build up.

  • Most of the page replays, but one embedded panel is an empty box.
    Likely cause: That panel is a cross-origin iframe (an embed from another domain), which cannot be read or reconstructed for privacy and security reasons.

    This is expected and cannot be changed. Use the console and network tabs on the bug to see what the embed was doing, and add a note in the bug describing the embedded content. Full details are in what BugMojo cannot capture.

  • A chart, game, map, or drawing area shows up blank or frozen.
    Likely cause: The element is rendered with canvas or WebGL, which paints pixels outside the DOM, so there is nothing for the replay to reconstruct.

    Attach a screenshot of the canvas region to the bug so reviewers can see the visual state. The DOM around the canvas still replays normally. See what BugMojo cannot capture for the full list of unsupported content.

  • Text and inputs replay as blocks or dots instead of real content.
    Likely cause: Client-side PII redaction is masking the content before it leaves the browser. Heavy masking rules can hide more than you expect.

    This is masking working as designed to protect sensitive data. If the hidden text is safe to record, loosen the masking scope in the extension's redaction settings, then reproduce again. Learn what is masked in client-side PII redaction.

  • The replay plays but suddenly stops or jumps far ahead.
    Likely cause: A navigation, hard reload, or tab crash ended the recording session partway through.

    Recording is scoped to a page session. Reproduce the bug within a single page where possible, and check the console tab for errors that may have crashed the tab. If the drop is unexplained, contact support with the bug link.

  • No replay appears at all and the extension icon looks inactive.
    Likely cause: The extension was not capturing on that page, so no session data was recorded.

    Confirm the extension is enabled and permitted on the site, then work through extension is not capturing. If capture still fails after those steps, contact support.

Common questions

Why is my session replay completely blank?

The most common cause is that capture started after the moment you were trying to record, so the DOM was never snapshotted. Reproduce the bug again with the extension recording from the start.

Why do parts of the replay show empty boxes?

Cross-origin iframes, canvas, and WebGL cannot be reconstructed from the DOM, so they appear as blank regions. This is expected. See what BugMojo cannot capture for the full list.

Is a blank replay a sign my data was lost?

Not necessarily. Console logs, network requests, and metadata are captured separately, so the bug detail page is still useful even when the replay is thin.

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Updated Jul 10, 2026 · Still stuck? Contact support

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