# Heatmap snapshots

> Why a heatmap has no screenshot: login walls, slow pages, redirects, private hosts, and how retaking works.

Section: Troubleshooting  
Canonical page: https://statsy.co/docs/troubleshooting/heatmap-snapshots  
Last updated: 2026-09-15

A heatmap is two things: the clicks and scroll depth we collect from real visitors, and a screenshot of the page to draw them on. The clicks are collected the moment you add the page. The screenshot is taken separately, by a real browser opening your page, and that is the part that can fail.

> **Note.** A failed snapshot never loses data. Clicks keep being collected while the screenshot is missing, and they appear as soon as a retake succeeds.

## “The snapshot could not be captured”

The page is fetched over HTTPS at your site’s own domain, with no sign-in and a twenty-second budget. The usual causes:

| Cause | What to do |
| --- | --- |
| The page is behind a login | The browser has no session and cannot sign in. Capture a public page instead, or make a public version of the layout you want to measure. |
| The page blocks automated browsers | Bot protection or a challenge page stops the capture, or captures the challenge instead of your page. Allow the capture, or pick a page without the protection. |
| The page takes too long | The capture gives up after twenty seconds. Check the page in a cold browser with no cache. |
| The page redirects away from HTTPS | A redirect to http fails the capture. Serve the page over HTTPS. |
| The site is not publicly reachable | Staging on a private address or an internal hostname can never be captured. Point the heatmap at a public page. |
| The page is very tall | Pages beyond roughly 16,000 pixels are clipped rather than failing. Consider measuring a shorter page. |

Fix the cause, then press **Retake**. Captures run one at a time, so a retake can sit in a queue for a minute before anything happens.

## The path was refused

A heatmap path is a path on your own site, not a URL. It must start with `/`, be at most 512 characters, and contain no query string or fragment. The host it resolves to must be the site’s domain or one of its extra domains.

## It says it is still capturing

“Capturing the snapshot” normally clears within a minute. If it does not, check back after a few minutes: one browser handles every capture, so a busy moment delays the queue rather than failing it.

## Snapshots turned off on this server

A self-hosted install without Chromium installed for Playwright shows a banner saying page snapshots are turned off, and new pages and retakes are refused. Existing heatmaps still collect clicks. An administrator needs to install Chromium on the API host; this never happens on the hosted service.

## Plan limits

Each plan includes a number of heatmap pages per site. Adding one past that says so and offers to remove a page or move up a plan. During a trial everything is available; once a trial has ended, heatmaps become read-only along with the rest of the dashboard.

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