Launch Log: Clearer admin errors, custom code placeholders, and key fixes

Ever wondered why aliens don’t visit our solar system? It turns out they read the reviews, and it only has one star!

Welcome to our first Launch Log of 2026. We’re kicking things off with a raft of exciting updates, including clearer error notices in GravityView, more flexible View-specific styling options, and several reliability and compatibility improvements.

GravityExport Lite

GravityExport Lite 2.4.2 sees the addition of a deterministic sort order to exports to prevent missing or duplicate entries in certain scenarios. Entries without a payment_date value now correctly export an empty value instead of the current date and time.

GravityView

GravityView 2.50 improves how errors are surfaced to administrators, adds new options for View-specific styling, and resolves a range of functional, performance, and compatibility issues.

Administrators now see detailed, actionable error messages when a View or entry cannot be displayed, replacing the generic permission message shown previously. Custom CSS and JavaScript settings now support placeholders that are automatically replaced with View-specific values, making it easier to scope styles and scripts to a single View without affecting others on the same page. The “Created By” field on the Edit Entry page now includes AJAX-powered search to simplify user selection.

A number of issues were fixed, including a JavaScript error that could break Edit Entry when forms used conditional logic on buttons, unnecessary database queries when caching was disabled, and incorrect display of serialized data in multi-column List fields revealed by conditional logic.

Furthermore, REST API requests for single entries now properly respect View settings such as “Prevent Direct Access” and REST API restrictions. Additional fixes address PHP 8.4 deprecation warnings, Name field hidden input settings from Gravity Forms, lingering hooks when switching lightbox providers, and a conflict that prevented the merge tag picker from appearing when Yoast SEO Premium was active.

Developer updates

• A new gk/gravityview/custom-code/placeholders filter was added to allow modification or extension of the placeholders available in Custom CSS and JavaScript settings.
• The VIEW_SELECTOR placeholder is hard-coded to .gv-container.gv-container-{view_id}; if those classes are removed using the gravityview/render/container/class filter, VIEW_SELECTOR will not work as expected and VIEW_ID should be used instead.
• View Custom CSS and JavaScript is now output only once per View, even when the same View is embedded multiple times on a page.