Am I misunderstanding how @onready works?

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Godot 4.3

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As I understand it from the docs @onready is called at the beginning of the _ready(), so that you can use it to reference another scenes.

I’m having a problem where the scenes that are refereced by @onready returns null, but if I rewrite it to be @export and set up the reference myself it works. I don’t understand why.

I thought the whole point of @onready was a way to avoid to set them up manually. I’m I missing something?

btw this is not a singelton/autoload, I saw in other posts that that could cause problems.

Below some of the code and the scene structure. The two first lines works after I changed them. Let me know if there is other context or info that can help.

Screen Shot 2026-05-26 at 12.05.31 AM
Screen Shot 2026-05-26 at 12.05.31 AM233×440 10.5 KB

@export var _titel: Label
@export var _val_fuel: Label

@onready var _val_hull: Label = $labels/val_hull
@onready var _val_crystals: Label = $labels/val_crystals
@onready var _val_barn: Label = $labels/val_barn
@onready var _val_dist: Label = $labels/val_dist


func _ready() -> void:
	update_labels()

func update_labels() -> void:
	_titel.text = "test name"
	_val_fuel.text = str(fuel)
	_val_hull.text = str(hull)
	_val_crystals.text = str(crystals)
	_val_barn.text = str(barnacles)
	_val_dist.text = str(distance)
2

are they being instantiated in the expected scene path?

3

Post the exact error messages.

Print get_path() in _ready() to check to which node the script is actually attached to. You might have accidentally attached it to some other node.

4

  1. Do the nodes actually exist at startup, or are they instantiated later such as in _ready()? @onready won’t work if the nodes don’t exist when it initiates.

  2. Try using get_node(). For example:
    @onready var _val_hull: Label = get_node(“labels/val_hull”)