When working on your Shopify store, you may want to make changes, test new designs, or prepare a theme before making it live. Shopify gives you the tools to do all of this without affecting what your customers see.
In this article:
Editing your theme without affecting your live store
Saving your changes to avoid data loss
Testing a new theme safely
Publishing your theme
Editing your theme without affecting your live store
If you want to edit your current theme without it being visible to customers, publish a different theme temporarily. This makes your in-progress theme non-live but still fully editable. When your changes are ready, you can publish your updated theme again.
Go to Online Store > Themes in your Shopify admin.
Publish an alternative theme. This makes it the active theme while moving your in-progress theme to the background.
Continue editing your in-progress theme in the theme editor.
When ready, re-publish your in-progress theme to make it live.
💡 This is also a great approach when importing Atlas pages. Import into an unpublished theme so you can review everything before customers see it.
Saving your changes to avoid data loss
Shopify preserves all saved changes even if the theme isn't live. Always click Save after making updates to ensure your edits are not lost.
If you close the theme editor without saving, any unsaved changes will be discarded. Get into the habit of saving frequently, especially when making multiple edits in one session.
⚠️ Shopify does not auto-save your theme editor changes. If you leave the editor or close your browser without clicking Save, your work will be lost.
Testing a new theme safely
Shopify allows you to manage up to 20 themes per store. This means you can add and test themes without affecting your live store or existing themes.
Go to Online Store > Themes in your Shopify admin.
Click Add theme and choose a new one to test.
Customize and preview the new theme before deciding to go live.
Adding or testing a new theme does not modify or delete any of your existing themes. You can maintain and work on multiple themes at the same time.
Publishing your theme
When you're ready to make a theme live:
Go to Online Store > Themes in your Shopify admin.
Find the theme you want to publish.
Click Actions > Publish.
Your new theme will immediately become the active theme on your store. Your previous live theme will remain in your theme list and can be re-published at any time.
For more details on managing themes, visit the Shopify Help Center.