No document types showing in Sanity Studio at /admin route

7 replies
Last updated: Dec 2, 2025
Hello everyone, quick intro, Im User an aspiring creative technologist, have recently dabbled with nextjs and now Im starting up onto Sanity.
I have been following this tutorial -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcTPaUfay5I&t=2363s I have followed all the steps up to 37:18 and when I navigate to localhost:3000/admin, it says I have no document types

Any clue how I can solve this problem, happy to share code with whoever is willing to help.

Big thanks in advance. Sorry in advance for coding newbie-ness
AI Update

Welcome to Sanity! The "no document types" message is a common issue when getting started, and it's usually a quick fix.

The most common cause is that your schema types aren't properly configured in your sanity.config.js (or sanity.config.ts) file. When you use defineConfig, you need to make sure you're passing your schema types correctly.

Here's what your config should look like:

import { defineConfig } from 'sanity'
import { structureTool } from 'sanity/structure'

export default defineConfig({
  name: 'my-studio',
  title: 'My Studio',
  projectId: 'your-project-id',
  dataset: 'production',
  plugins: [
    structureTool()  // This is required to see the structure tool interface
  ],
  schema: {
    types: [/* your schema types go here */]
  }
})

Common mistakes to check:

  1. Missing the schema property entirely - Make sure you have a schema: { types: [...] } object in your config

  2. Empty types array - If you haven't created any schema files yet, the types array will be empty. You need at least one document type defined

  3. Not importing your schema types - If you've created schema files (like post.js, author.js, etc.), you need to import them and add them to the types array:

import post from './schemas/post'
import author from './schemas/author'

export default defineConfig({
  // ...
  schema: {
    types: [post, author]
  }
})
  1. Missing the structureTool plugin - Without structureTool() in your plugins array, you won't see the content management interface. Note: if you're following an older tutorial, it might reference deskTool() - this has been renamed to structureTool() and the import is now import { structureTool } from 'sanity/structure'

Quick troubleshooting steps:

  • Check if you have any schema files created (usually in a schemas folder)
  • Make sure those schema files are being imported into your config
  • Verify the types array includes your imported schemas
  • Restart your dev server after making config changes
  • If the tutorial uses deskTool, replace it with structureTool and update the import path

If you're still stuck, feel free to share your sanity.config.js file and your schema folder structure - the community is always happy to help debug! Since you're at 37:18 in the tutorial, double-check that you've completed the schema creation steps that should come before that timestamp. Also note that if the tutorial is a bit older, some of the plugin names may have changed, so don't worry - the concepts are the same, just the naming has been updated.

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