Common questions, tips, and help with troubleshooting Recordings:
- Why do Recordings appear to be split or stop abruptly?
- Why do the pages look broken/no CSS loading?
- Why isn't Hotjar capturing any sessions?
- Why aren't new Recordings being added to my account?
- Why isn't Hotjar recording every visitor?
- Why do some parts of the page appear blank or without content?
- Why are fonts/icon-fonts appearing as boxes or not loading at all?
- Why aren't adverts, chat widgets, or other third-party content appearing in Recordings?
- Why can't I see all of my Recordings?
- Why do I get a popup telling me to upgrade when I try to start Recording?
- Why can't I start another Recording Snapshot?
- Will my Recordings be deleted if I start a new snapshot?
- I thought I had unlimited Recordings on Plus/Business?
- I thought I had 2000 Recordings on Basic?
- Why are my numbers appearing as asterisks/1s?
- How do I stop personal information appearing in my Recordings?
- How do I use the developer console to identify problems?
- Why won't my Recording load when I try to watch it?
Why do Recordings appear to be split or stop abruptly?
On some occasions, you may notice that Recordings are either split into separate Recordings or stop abruptly. This could happen for any of the following reasons:
- Hotjar keeps tracking a session even if your visitor is idle for a few minutes. If a visitor is idle for over 30 minutes, Hotjar will automatically end that session. If that visitor later returns, they will start a new Recording session. If you see Recordings being split, check the time they were added, it could be the visitor was idle for over 30 minutes or left your site and returned to it later on.
- Your visitors are moving to a new page in new browser tabs or windows. When this happens, Hotjar is currently unable to link the two sessions together.
- The Hotjar Tracking Code is not present on all pages so Hotjar is not able to record all sessions.
- Hotjar is unable to track visitors that are moving to pages across multiple top-level domains. An example of this is when a visitor moves from www.example.com to www.example.co.uk.
Navigating to third-party payment gateways will always stop a Recording
Since Hotjar cannot be placed on a third-party site, we will not be able to collect data on a third-party payment gateway. Recordings will stop once the visitor gets to this step in their journey.
Why do the pages look broken/no CSS loading?
Hotjar servers need access to the assets on your site to generate Recordings successfully. When the CSS looks broken, this typically means our servers have difficulty fetching some of the CSS files from your server.
There are a number of things which could cause this. Here are the known reasons why sites may block Hotjar from accessing CSS:
- Blocking access based on geolocation, or your site only allows certain IPs to access assets
- Blocking based on domain/referrer
- Blocking based on User-Agent
- Blocking based on lack of cookie/sessionStorage
User-Agent, referrer, and IP blocking based issues can be addressed by:
- Allowing the IP addresses listed in Hotjar IPs.
- Allowing the domain/referrer http://local.hotjar.com
- Allowing the User Agents from How do Hotjar Heatmaps Work?
Why isn't Hotjar capturing any sessions?
If you've started Recording but cannot see any new Recordings being added after a few hours, this may mean that the Hotjar Tracking Code isn't properly installed. You will need to confirm that all pages on your site have the Hotjar Tracking Code installed properly.
If Hotjar is installed correctly, and Recordings are switched on and you are still not seeing any Recordings, check your browser developer console. You can check your browser developer console by following the steps in this guide.
If there is a Content Security Policy issue, you will see something similar to the below error:
You can read more about CSP issues in our article about content security policy settings.
Why aren't new Recordings being added to my account?
When a snapshot is complete, Recordings will be paused. To continue recording, enable Recordings again. A completed snapshot looks like this on your dashboard:
Once you click on the green button, you will be prompted to select the Snapshot size and start Recording sessions.
When a snapshot is currently in progress, you will see this on your Recordings dashboard:
If you have an active snapshot, but no Recordings are being collected, it is also a good idea to confirm that all pages on your site have the Hotjar Tracking Code installed properly. The Tracking Code may have been removed in between Recording snapshots by accident or during a layout re-design.
Why isn't Hotjar capturing every session?
You might experience instances where other tools such as Google Analytics report more visits than Hotjar has Recordings. Our article, Does Hotjar Record all my users?, outlines reasons Hotjar may not Record a user based on settings you've enabled, or is prevented from capturing a session based on the user's local device configuration.
Why do some parts of my pages appear blank, or missing content?
Hotjar captures a user's interactions and the page itself during their session. Behind the scenes, we capture the page DOM and attach event listeners to DOM elements. Hotjar is unable to capture and track certain content types embedded in the DOM. Other DOM elements block Hotjar from accessing them.
Certain elements will render, but we may be unable to replicate user interaction:
- Video elements: since video player state is not held in the DOM, Hotjar cannot replicate user interaction with video player controls.
Elements that block both content and behavior capture include:
-
Iframes elements: these are best thought of as pages-inside-pages. Potential security threats associated with iframes mean Hotjar cannot track iframe content. Learn more about iframes in Recordings.
Third-party tools that are embedded as iframes that we cannot support include:
- Google Maps
- Chatbots
- Third-party forms providers
- Shadow DOM elements: as a newer web standard, Hotjar is currently unable to track Shadow DOM elements. This includes both open Shadow roots and closed Shadow roots.
-
Canvas elements: used for drawing graphics, including games and many graphical tools. This includes 3D graphics created with WebGL. Canvas content is not exposed to the DOM, meaning Hotjar cannot access it.
Commonly, we see this associated with 3D/2D drawing tools and games.
These content types are unsupported:
- Adobe Flash: will be reaching end-of-life in December 2020.
Why are fonts/icon-fonts appearing as boxes or not loading at all?
If web fonts on your site aren't appearing in visitor playbacks, this usually means that they are only allowed to load from your domain. Since sessions are played back on the insights.hotjar.com domain, you may see errors in the console such as:
Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at http://www.domain.com/fonts/your-font.woff. This can be fixed by moving the resource to the same domain or enabling CORS.
To fix this, you will need to enable CORS (cross-origin resource sharing).
Enable CORS on Apache
If you have access to the .htaccess file or the httpd.conf configuration file, you can add the following code to allow your font files to be loaded externally:
<FilesMatch "\.(ttf|ttc|otf|eot|woff|font.css|css)$">
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
</FilesMatch>Enable CORS on nginx
If you have access to the httpd.conf configuration file, you can add the following code to allow your font files to be loaded externally:
if ($filename ~* ^.*?\.(eot)|(ttf)|(woff)$){
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
}For more information on how to enable CORS, you can check out enable-cors.org.
CORs may affect Heatmaps
If you are seeing this error within your Recordings, there is a chance the same error occurs within your Heatmaps.
Why aren't adverts, chat widgets, or other third-party content appearing in Recordings?
Ads, chat widgets, and many other third-party software installed on your site are loaded as iframes. In order to protect you from possible security threats when replacing Recordings, Hotjar suppresses all iframes from executing. This means we are unable to track iframe content on your site.
You can read more about how Hotjar handles iframes in our article about this.
Why can't I see all of my Recordings?
There may be a date filter applied. If you see a 0 followed by a number, such as 0/999, this means you have 999 Recordings total, and none are showing on the list. Change the date range filter to Last 90 day or Custom date range in order to see more of your Recordings.
Why do I get a popup telling me to upgrade when I try to start Recording?
This means you are on the Basic plan and have more than 300 Recordings in your dashboard. If you see a 0 followed by a number, such as 0/300, this means you have 300 Recordings total and none are showing on the list. Change the date range filter to Last 90 day or Custom date range in order to see more of your Recordings.
To start Recording again, delete your older Recordings until you have less than 200 in your dashboard. Once you have room, you will no longer see an error when clicking "Record Visitors".
See also: How to Delete Recordings, Recording Filters
Why can't I start another Recording Snapshot?
This means you are on the Basic plan and have more than 300 Recordings in your dashboard. If you see a 0 followed by a number, such as 0/300, this means you have 300 Recordings total and none are showing on the list. Change the date range filter to Last 90 day or Custom date range in order to see more of your Recordings.
To start Recording again, delete your older Recordings until you have less than 200 in your dashboard. Once you have room, you will no longer see an error when clicking "Record Visitors".
See also: How to Delete Recordings, Recording Filters
Will my Recordings be deleted if I start a new snapshot?
No, Recordings are only deleted for two reasons:
- A team member on the account the deleted them.
- The Recording reached their expiration date based on our Data Retention Policy.
I thought I had unlimited Recordings on Plus/Business?
On the Plus and Business plans, you can store unlimited Recordings in your dashboard. Recordings are taken in snapshots and the snapshot size depends on the plan.
Once your snapshot has finished, you will need to start another snapshot.
See also: Snapshots Explained
I thought I had 2000 Recordings on Basic?
Basic is recommended for sites with 2000 pageviews per day or less. You can have up to 300 Recordings, taken in snapshots of 100 Recordings each.
See also: Snapshots Explained, Hotjar Plans
Why are my numbers appearing as asterisks/1s?
Whenever your text content appears as an asterisk (*) (or 1 inside input elements of a "number" type), you're seeing Hotjar's user privacy-protecting suppression feature in action.
We suppress numbers by default, but they can be disabled. It is important to note that numbers 9 characters or longer will always be suppressed. We see this the most with telephone numbers or credit card numbers.
You can read more about text suppression, including how to configure it in our article about content suppression.
How do I stop personal information appearing in my Recordings?
Hotjar suppresses user keyboard input, and numbers embedded in page content by default but need extra direction to suppress personal information contained in your page text content or images. Our article about content suppression helps advise on how you can configure what Hotjar should and should not capture.
When suppressed, your Recordings will render this content as asterisks of slightly randomized length (*). This occurs on the user's device meaning it is never stored on our servers.
How do I use the browser console to identify problems?
A number of the problems discussed in this article advise using your browser console to look for error messages. These errors may appear on your site, or in a Recording. If you need help accessing the console, each browser has its own documentation, linked below.
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Safari
- Edge
- Internet Explorer (bear in mind that Insights is not supported in Internet Explorer).
When you open the console, you will usually see warnings colored in yellow, and errors colored in red. Warnings can generally be ignored. Errors in red may be useful in diagnosing a problem.
In the example below, you can see an example of an error indicating a missing resource, indicated by the "404 (Not Found)" message.
When identifying reasons why Hotjar may not be capturing user data, inspecting the console while visiting your site can be useful. Two common errors are:
- Content security policy errors.
- Errors related to certain values Hotjar's scripts require access to being "undefined". These often mean that Hotjar is trying to access a native browser function that another script on your site has overridden, preventing Hotjar from tracking users properly. These errors will need to be addressed by developers with access to your source code.
The console is especially useful in identifying errors that prevent Recordings from accessing fonts or images used by your site. You may see:
- 404 errors: these usually mean that the file Hotjar is trying to access is no longer available from the URL captured at the time of recording.
- 403 errors: these usually mean that a font or image file Hotjar is trying to access cannot be accessed without additional permissions. This is often because the file is behind a login, or because your site disables other sites from accessing your images or fonts. These can often be fixed by allowing insights.hotjar.com to access your images or fonts.
- CORS errors: we have detailed instructions on how to solve these errors in our article about fixing CORS errors.
Why won't my Recording load when I try to watch it?
If you try to watch a Recording and the playback never loads or shows a blank screen, it's possible that Hotjar encountered an error when attempting to render certain code changes in the user's session.
Because this issue isn't common and can be caused by a bug, it's best to Contact support so our team can take a closer look.