Preview Sleeping or Stuck in ChanTan Studio: How to Fix

"Your app is sleeping" is normal, not an error. How to wake your preview, fix one that is stuck or out of date, and unstick a page that never loads.

"Your app is sleeping" is not an error. If you leave a project alone, its live preview is paused on purpose to save resources — and it costs you nothing.

Two things worth knowing before you do anything:

• Your code and your data are never affected by a sleeping or stuck preview.
• Only the private preview sleeps. Your published site — the real address people visit — never sleeps.

1. Tap "Wake up"

When you see 🌙 "Your app is sleeping" with "We paused it to save resources. Tap to wake it up.", press "Wake up". It takes a few seconds.

Sending any message in the chat wakes it too.

You'll also see a "Sleeping" chip in the project header while it's paused. It disappears on its own.

2. If a banner offers "Fix it", press it

"Preview hit a snag." comes with two buttons: "Fix it" and "Dismiss".

Press "Fix it" — it hands the error straight to the AI for you. You don't have to explain anything.

3. If it says "Preview failed to start", restart the preview

Open the preview menu and choose Restart preview. It rebuilds the preview from scratch, usually in 30–60 seconds (rarely up to 3 minutes).

"Your code and data aren't affected."

4. If your latest change isn't showing, scroll first

Most of the time the change is already there.

5. If a banner says you're previewing an old version, come back to now

"Previewing old version — this is NOT the current state" means you're browsing your version history, not that something broke.

Press "Back to current". Your work is not gone.

✅ Done. The preview shows your app running, with no sleeping message and no amber banner — and the change you just made is visible on the page.

Preview links that "expired" or aren't found

If you saved a preview link and later see "Preview is waking up", "Preview is starting", "Preview link expired" or "Preview not found":

Preview links are tied to a live session, so an old one stops working by design. That's not a bug.

• Don't reuse saved preview links. Open the project in ChanTan Studio instead.
• To share your work with anyone else, send your published address. That one never expires.

When ChanTan Studio itself never finishes loading

This is a different problem: the dashboard or the project page spins forever, often with no message at all. Sometimes you get one of these instead:

• "Couldn't load project — Retry"
• "We couldn't load your projects. They're safe — this is a connection problem."
• "Something went wrong" / "An unexpected error occurred. Please try reloading the page." with a Reload button.

What it means: your open tab has gone out of step with the site — most often because ChanTan was updated in the last minute while your tab was already open. It is not a problem with your project, and nothing is lost.

Work down this list, in order:

1. Reload the page — ⌘R on Mac, Ctrl-R on Windows. This fixes the large majority of cases.
2. Hard refresh — ⌘⇧R on Mac, Ctrl-Shift-R on Windows. This drops the old cached copy of the page.
3. Press "Retry" or "Reload" on the banner, if one is showing.
4. Wait about 60 seconds and reload once more.
5. Try a private/incognito window, or a different browser, to rule out a browser extension.

Your projects, messages and files are stored on our side and are never affected by this.

When to contact support

Email support@chantan.studio if:

• ChanTan Studio still won't load after three reloads over five minutes.
• The preview flashes repeatedly or refreshes many seconds late — or use "🐞 Report a problem" on the latest reply, which is faster.

Include these five things:

1. Your account email
2. The project name
3. The exact message you saw (or a screenshot)
4. Roughly when it started, and your timezone
5. What you had just done before it appeared

You do not need support for: a sleeping preview, an expired preview link, or a preview that just needs a refresh. Those all have a button.

Honest limits

• Waking a preview isn't instant — a few seconds normally, up to about 3 minutes for a full restart.
• A preview pauses after roughly 20 minutes with the tab closed, and up to about an hour with the project open in front of you. There's no setting to keep it awake forever.
• Preview links can't be made permanent. Publishing is the only way to get an address that lasts.