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.

What you'll learn

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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

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

Step 1: Request access to the merchant's store

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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.

Step 2: Download the merchant's theme code

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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.

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

Step 3: Make a customization

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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

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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.

In a terminal, navigate to your working directory.
Serve your theme by using the following command:
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.

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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.

Step 6: Publish the updated theme

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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.

Enter the following command:
Select the theme that you want to publish from the list.
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

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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:
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.