Customize a theme

As a theme developer, you can customize themes for Shopify merchants. These customizations might range from small tweaks to complete redesigns. Shopify Partners can offer theme customization services through the Shopify Partner Directory.

In this tutorial, you'll use Shopify CLI to customize a merchant's theme and then share your progress with them.

If you're customizing a theme for a client, then you should also review our best practices for working with merchants.

Caution

This tutorial describes customizing themes that don't use the Shopify GitHub integration. If your merchant uses the Shopify GitHub integration to manage their theme code, then you can request access to the repository from them, or you can push changes to the theme that's connected to a branch of the repository using Shopify CLI.

What you'll learn

After you've finished this tutorial, you'll have accomplished the following:

• Gained access to the merchant's store
• Set up your local development environment
• Downloaded a copy of the merchant's theme
• Made a change and previewed it
• Shared your changes with the merchant
• Published your changes

Requirements

• You've installed Shopify CLI
• The URL of the store that you want to work on, such as johns-apparel.myshopify.com.

Step 1: Request access to the merchant's store

To work on a merchant's theme, you should request access to their store. Working on a theme in a merchant's store lets you test it with the merchant's products and other resources.

If you haven't done so already, you should request a collaborator account with the Manage themes permission for the store. Collaborator accounts give you access to only the sections of a store that a merchant wants you to access, and don't count toward a store's staff limit.

Note

You can also access themes using other accounts and credentials. Learn more.

Step 2: Download the merchant's theme code

If the merchant doesn't have a GitHub repository for their theme, then you need to download a copy of the theme code to work on it locally.

1. Run the following command to retrieve a list of all of the themes in the store. You can optionally specify the local path where the theme should be stored using the --path flag.

2. Select a theme from the list. Its contents are downloaded to the current folder or the specified folder.

Tip

If you haven't done so already, you're prompted to log in to Shopify when you run the pull command. Make sure that you log in using the account that was granted access to the store. If you're already logged in with an account that doesn't have appropriate access, then you can log out using shopify auth logout.

Step 3: Make a customization

After you've downloaded the merchant's theme, you can make any necessary changes to the theme code. For example, you can add support for multiple currencies and languages in the merchant's theme using our localization tutorial, or you can make an adjustment to the theme's CSS to change its appearance.

Refer to Next steps to explore additional feature tutorials.

Step 4: Preview your changes

After you make a change to the theme, you can run shopify theme dev to interact with the theme in a browser. Shopify CLI uploads the theme as a development theme on the store that you're connected to.

The command returns a URL that hot reloads local changes to CSS and sections, allowing you to preview changes in real time using the store's data. This preview is only available in Google Chrome.

1. In a terminal, navigate to your working directory.

2. Serve your theme by using the following command:

3. In Google Chrome, navigate to http://127.0.0.1:9292 to open the theme preview.

You can also use the dev command to generate a preview link and a link to the theme editor for the development theme.

The development theme is destroyed when you run shopify auth logout. If you need to share your progress with the merchant, then proceed to the next step.

Step 5: Share your changes

To share your changes with the merchant, you need to upload your changes to the theme to the merchant's store. You're prompted to select the theme that you want to update. This command returns a link to the editor for the theme in the Shopify admin and a preview link, both of which you can share with the merchant.

Tip

If you don't want to update an existing theme in the store with your changes, then you can upload your theme to the theme library as a new, unpublished theme using the --unpublished flag.

Step 6: Publish the updated theme

After the merchant approves the changes, you can publish the theme to make it live in the merchant's store. If you haven't yet pushed your changes to the store, then you need to do so before you publish the theme.

1. Enter the following command:

2. Select the theme that you want to publish from the list.

3. Select Yes to confirm that you want to publish the specified theme.

The theme is published and is now the active theme for the store.

Next steps

• Learn more about building your business building Shopify themes.

• Learn how to implement features in a theme. You can enable certain Shopify features or add functionality to a theme. Features fall into the following categories:

  • Product merchandising
  • Pricing and payments
  • Delivery and fulfillment
  • Customer engagement
  • Shopify Markets
  • Site navigation and search
  • Trust and security

• Consider introducing version control into a merchant's theme. If this customization is the first of many that you'll do for the same client, then consider using the Shopify GitHub integration to introduce version control into the merchant's theme and make ongoing work easier to manage.

• Review some of our best practices for building and customizing themes. When you customize a theme, you should make sure that you're not degrading its performance or accessibility. You should also introduce any improvements with our design best practices in mind.

• Learn how to lint your theme code. Use Theme Check, a linter for Liquid and JSON, to detect errors and enforce Shopify theme and Liquid best practices.