Why does my app work for me but not other users?
Last checked 31 Aug 2026
Short answer
This is almost always a permissions or role issue — check Row-Level Security policies and the user_roles table rather than the front-end code, since it's usually about who's allowed to read/write data, not a bug.
Why this happens
If it works for you but not others, the difference is usually one of:
- You're an admin/owner and other users aren't — your account may bypass restrictions others hit.
- Row-Level Security (RLS) policies are scoped to your user ID, or to a role others don't have.
- You're logged in and testing while others are logged out, or on a different auth state entirely.
- Cached local state or local storage on your machine that other users don't have (e.g. a previously set flag or token).
- Browser/device differences — a feature relying on something not supported in another browser.
Diagnostic sequence
- Test the same flow in an incognito window, logged in as a different (non-admin) test account.
- Check the Logs for errors specific to that user's requests — permission errors show up here even when the front end fails silently.
- Review RLS policies for the table(s) involved — confirm they allow the access pattern for the affected role, not just for you.
- Confirm roles are stored correctly in a separate
user_rolestable, not a column on the user's profile row, and that the affected user actually has the expected role.
What usually goes wrong
- RLS policies written and tested only against the admin account, so they silently block regular users.
- A "is_admin" boolean on the profiles table instead of a proper
user_rolestable — this is also a security risk since it's easy to escalate. - Forgetting that a new table needs its own RLS policies; a table with RLS enabled but no policies denies everyone but the owner by default.
Fixing it
Other users get [describe the failure] but I don't. Check the RLS policies on [table name] and confirm they allow this for the [role] role, not just admins.
Since Lovable Cloud users don't have dashboard access, ask Lovable to inspect and adjust policies directly rather than looking for a Supabase dashboard yourself.
Sources
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