What’s New for Partners and Developers at Shopify (2023)

June 2023

Introducing POS UI extensions

Introducing Shopify POS UI extensions, a new way to build point-of-sale customizations that look and feel native to Shopify with significantly faster load times. POS UI extensions will help your POS app development process with:

• Highly-integrated workflows that boost user engagement
• New and creative point-of-sale workflows
• Better app performance with faster load times

Learn more about POS UI extensions and the opportunities with building for point-of-sale in our blog post.

Read more

Theme developers can now add color schemes to themes

This update adds clarity and flexibility to the theme editing experience by allowing theme-defined and merchant-defined color schemes, adding a visual preview that enables merchants to more easily and predictably update theme colors, and allowing merchants to implement theme changes at the global, section, and block level within their theme.

A solution which will enable theme developers to specify how to migrate merchants’ theme data during the update process when introducing architecture changes (ex: changing scope of settings, modifying schema structure in other ways, and more) will be available later this summer.

Learn more

Quickstart development stores for new Shopify Partner organizations

When a new Shopify Partner organization is created, Shopify automatically creates a development store called Quickstart. This store is a non-transferable development store that’s populated with generated test data. You can immediately use this store to test apps, themes, and custom storefronts.

You can access the Quickstart store from the stores list in Shopify CLI, or by logging into your partner account and finding the store on the Stores page. If you sign up for a Shopify Partner account with a verified business email address, then the Quickstart store is created automatically. Learn more in our developer documentation.

Learn more

The Plus Wholesale Channel will be deprecated on April 30, 2024

With the release of over a dozen new features since launch, B2B on Shopify is the future of selling wholesale on our platform. As a result, we are deprecating the Plus Wholesale Channel effective April 30, 2024. Impacted merchants received communications on June 6 and 7, 2023, with information about our new B2B features and plans to sunset the wholesale channel, along with details about the migration process and a self-serve migration tool.

We ask that you reach out to your clients using the Plus Wholesale Channel and begin the conversation around migrating to B2B on Shopify.

Learn how to migrate

Updates to Shopify Audiences

Drive better performance for your merchants’ digital ads with custom audience lists powered by Shopify’s commerce insights and machine learning. The latest algorithm is now 63% better at driving conversions at a lower cost. Learn how you can leverage Shopify Audiences to help your merchants reach the right buyers and reduce ad costs.

Learn more

Watch now: Build B2B solutions using Shopify APIs

In this webinar, Shopify’s engineering team provides a deep dive into Shopify’s B2B APIs, best practices for building custom solutions, and upcoming B2B API releases, and answers questions submitted by partners and merchants.

Watch now

Shape Hydrogen’s future and enter to win a gift card

We value your opinion and would like to invite you to participate in a 15 to 20 minute unmoderated usability test to help us improve our product, Hydrogen. You can take the test at your convenience without the need to interact with anyone. By participating, you’ll be contributing to creating a better experience for you and your fellow developers.

You’ll also stand a chance to win a gift card worth $100 USD or $50 USD (or the equivalent in your local currency). Your contribution can make a significant impact, even if you have limited experience with Hydrogen.

Find out more

May 2023

Updates to checkout extensibility

We’ve added new DatePicker and Disclosure checkout UI components. DatePicker will help you build customizations to select specific delivery dates, while the Disclosure component will help with UX patterns that progressively disclose information, like the long list of line items in a bundle.

Additionally, checkout branding now supports custom fonts. Checkout, accounts, and UI extensions inherit these fonts making experiences consistent across surfaces.

Together these capabilities will help merchants upgrade to checkout extensibility.

Learn more

Build apps powered by Shopify Functions

Checkout validation and product bundle apps powered by Functions will soon be generally available to merchants, which means now’s the time to start building these tools if you want to capitalize on the new opportunities presented by Functions.

Get started building an app that ensures purchases meet a specific criteria before completing a checkout, or an app that groups products together as a bundle. Or, learn more about Shopify Functions below.

Learn more

Changes to support requests for app charge refunds

As of May 3, 2023, merchants will be required to contact partners directly if they want to request a refund for an app. Shopify Support will no longer reach out to partners on behalf of the merchant to facilitate their request.

This change will streamline the refund process, as refunds are at the partners’ discretion and partners have the ability to issue most refunds themselves. The exception is still reversals to pending charges. In these cases, we highly encourage partners to issue application credits, which Shopify Support can then apply to the invoice.

Please contact Partner Support with any questions about this change.

Contact support

Deep linking for theme app blocks now available

We’re making it easier for merchants to install apps in context. App developers can now generate a deep link that takes merchants to the theme editor, where a desired app block will be added automatically for the merchant to preview and adjust prior to saving.

Deep linking simplifies your app’s installation flow, because merchants won’t need to navigate to the theme editor, find the block, and then act on it. Instead, your app does the work for them. Because merchants can preview the block, you’re providing them with control over what they include in their storefront.

Learn more

Partner email verification

To keep the Shopify App Store safe and secure and to better serve our partner community, we will begin enforcing partner email verification.

Your contact information allows us to share important information and updates related to your business. It also enables us to make sure that every account is created by a real person with real contact details, which helps us keep the app store safe for all users.

Account owners, please use the banner in the partner dashboard to verify your email as soon as possible to avoid restrictions to your dashboard access.

Log in

Shopify Foundations Certification: Introduction to POS and Retail

Shopify’s Point of Sale gives merchants access to everything they need to sell in person, backed by everything they need to sell online. Level up your skills and be one of the first developers to get certified in the features, benefits, and positioning for Shopify’s POS system.

Take this course as part of Shopify’s Foundations Certification series, designed to empower partners who support merchants.

Start learning now

April 2023

What you missed on the Shopify Partners Blog

Built for Shopify applications are now open

Now any app, big or small, that meets our highest quality bar can apply to stand out with an easy-to-spot badge, search boost, and promotion opportunities in the Shopify admin and Shopify App Store content.

Select your app in the Partner Dashboard and click on Distribution to see if it meets the requirements to apply. If not, follow the criteria checklist and start unlocking achievements along the way.

Visit dashboard

Extending the 2022-04 API release support date

Shopify is extending support for API version 2022-04 to June 30, 2023. All public and custom apps using API resources no longer supported in API versions 2022-04 and 2022-07 will stop working as intended after this date. Existing apps must migrate to API version 2022-10 or later by June 30, 2023 to avoid any interruptions.

Below are a few important breaking changes:

• Deprecated properties on the Order resource in the REST Admin API—see details here
• Some Fulfillment API endpoints and mutations relating to managing fulfillments via an order have been deprecated

Learn more in the developer changelog.

View details

You can now create Shopify Functions with Javascript

Good news—Shopify Functions written in JavaScript can now be deployed in production environments. Going forward, Rust and JavaScript will be our first-class languages for Shopify Functions. However, you can still write Functions in any WebAssembly-supported language that meets our requirements.

If this is your first time experimenting with Functions, welcome! Functions are a powerful set of Shopify backend extensibility APIs used to meet unique merchant business needs. Watch our intro video to learn why Shopify developers are excited about it.

Have questions? We’re hosting a text-only Discord AMA on April 13 at 11am EST. Test it out and attend to ask us any questions or point out any issues you’re facing. Accept the invite now and don’t miss a thing.

Learn more

Shopify App Store credit for merchants

This month, we are running a promotion in which we give merchants credit to the Shopify App Store to show them the power of apps and how using them can help their business thrive.

You may see new traffic and installs as a result of this promotion. Ensure your app is eligible for future promotions by integrating the Shopify Billing API.

Learn about the Shopify Billing API

Update to Google Analytics 4 before July 2023

Google is sunsetting Universal Analytics in July 2023, and replacing it with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which is Google’s next-generation measurement solution. Universal Analytics will continue to collect data until it is sunset in July 2023, and data will remain accessible for at least 6 months afterwards.

Visit our documentation for next steps to migrate your app listing tracking from Universal Analytics to the new Google Analytics 4 or to set up tracking for the first time.

Visit docs

Idempotent creation of AppUsageRecords

In the Admin GraphQL API version 2023-04, appUsageRecordCreate now supports an optional parameter idempotencyKey which ensures the merchant will not be charged twice for the same intent. When idempotencyKey is provided, the mutation will return the same response as any previous appUsageRecordCreate mutations with identical idempotencyKey for the intended shop and requesting app, rather than creating a new record and charging the merchant again.

Learn more about this update in the docs.

Visit docs

Creating app charges using the merchant’s billing currency

In the Admin GraphQL API version 2023-04, the Billing API will now allow developers to create app charges using currencies that match the merchant’s local billing currency.

Previously, app charges could only be created using USD and were converted to the merchant’s local currency using the exchange rate at the time the invoice was issued. By creating app charges in the merchant’s billing currency, app developers can provide merchants with better price predictability and set pricing that is proportional to the purchasing power of their local billing currency.

Learn more

Introducing Shopify Certifications: Start learning now

Introducing Shopify Certifications: Foundations, our new self-paced course designed to help you accelerate your knowledge of Shopify solutions and expand your customer reach.

Complete all eight courses and earn the Shopify Foundations Certification. Let customers know about your expertise by displaying certification badges across your website and your marketing assets.

Explore all our available courses at the link below.

See courses

Gain expertise in checkout extensibility

From helping merchants build bespoke checkout experiences to developing public apps, there are huge opportunities for you to capitalize on checkout extensibility.

Get started with our new education series: Upgrade Shopify Checkout. In this two-part series, you’ll learn about checkout extensibility, the checkout.liquid deprecation, and how to upgrade merchants. Earn a badge when you complete both courses to show your expertise.

Enroll now

March 2023

What you missed on the Shopify Partner Blog

Highlights from the Shopify Winter ’23 Edition

The Winter ’23 Edition launched on February 9, and was full of products to help speed up your development process and further customize your commerce builds. Announcements included:

Get caught up on all the news by visiting the Editions website, or dig into the developer announcements with our roundup on the Partners Blog.

Read blog

Introducing the Mock Shop API for prototyping storefronts

We are introducing Mock.Shop, a free prototyping tool to build a proof-of-concept storefront without having to set up a shop or run any server-side code. Use the Mock Shop API and AI-powered text-to-GraphQL generator to query live commerce data such as sample products, variants, and carts to help you quickly prototype commerce storefronts.

Mock.Shop is publicly available—no server or access tokens required.

Visit Mock.Shop

Increasing search relevance with behavioral data

The search algorithms we use on the Shopify App Store now incorporate more data on how merchants engage with results after they search. In other words, apps that merchants find most relevant, given what they’re searching for, will rank higher overall.

We’re always optimizing our automated systems to show the most useful results possible.While term matching will still inform results, this update will reduce the impact of keyword stuffing.

Learn more

All-new B2B features and partner resources

Since we launched B2B on Shopify in June 2022, we’ve released dozens of new B2B features and enhancements, including: customer-specific product publishing, quantity rules, checkout to draft, easy reordering, credit card vaulting, and new B2B APIs. Learn more with our updated B2B partner enablement resources, including the new B2B on Shopify Partner Guide, at the link below.

Learn more

Google Analytics 4 is launching in March

We are excited to announce that Google Analytics 4 will be launching natively through the Google channel app on Shopify in March. This upgrade will enable merchants to seamlessly take advantage of Google Analytics 4’s enhanced real-time, multi-channel tracking and privacy controls. Universal Analytics will continue to process data until July 1, 2023 (July 1, 2024 for Analytics 360 properties) and merchants will be able to continue to access previously processed data for at least six months after that date.

Learn more

Transporter app sunset notice

On April 20th, 2023, we will sunset the Transporter data migration app. All merchants with the Transporter app installed were notified on February 20th, and have been encouraged to instead use the third-party Matrixify app for their data migration needs. Matrixify has in-depth documentation and tutorials, and supports the Transporter CSV export format for common data types.

If you have any questions about the Transporter app sunset, please reach out to Shopify Support. Or, learn more about Matrixify in the Shopify App Store.

Visit the Shopify App Store

January 2023

Introducing: Commerce Components by Shopify

Shopify has spent nearly two decades building the components that form the world’s most powerful commerce platform. Now, we’re opening those components to the biggest retailers in the world with a new offering: Commerce Components by Shopify.

Commerce Components is a modern, composable stack that lets retailers choose the modular components they want, integrate them with their existing services, and create incredible customer experiences built for conversion. It’s designed for the unique requirements of enterprise retailers generating over $500 million USD in annual revenue.

This is an exciting evolution in Shopify’s journey to make commerce better for everyone.

Learn more

A suite of B2B APIs is now available in stable

Build custom wholesale solutions to help Plus merchants easily scale and grow their DTC and B2B stores from one platform. It is important to ensure your current B2B apps are up to date with these new APIs.

This release includes metafields for Company and Company Location so you can create custom data fields such as order quantity requirements. It also includes Checkout UI extensions based on B2B buyer identity, allowing you to build performant and upgrade-safe apps for B2B checkout experiences—such as hiding, reordering, or offering custom shipping and payment options using the Delivery and Payment Functions. It also supports importing non-Shopify B2B orders via REST API, automatic payment reminder emails to companies, and setting ‘due on fulfillment’ as a payment term.

To learn more about building B2B apps, visit our developer docs.

Visit B2B docs

Delivery and payment customizations are now available in Developer Preview

The Functions APIs for delivery customizations and payment customizations are now available in a developer preview. With these new APIs you can hide, reorder, or rename delivery and payment options to help merchants increase conversions and stand out from the competition.

To learn more about building with delivery and payment Functions, visit our developer docs.

Delivery customizations

Payment customizations

Test webhook topics and streamline webhook failure emails

You’ll now be able to trigger a webhook test payload to a specified destination directly from the CLI. Previously, developers needed to create a dev store and manually click around with an app installed in order to test their app logic. This new feature allows you to more easily test subscriptions for each topic, so you can see what the payload will look like before your app is in production.

We’re also reducing the number of emails sent each time a webhook delivery fails. Previously, there was one email sent per attempt, which could quickly add up and become ineffective for monitoring. Now, only one email will be sent for each one-per-consecutive string of failed attempts, over a two-day period, in order to keep your inbox clean and actionable.

If you have any questions about these changes, contact Partner Support or check out the dev docs below.

Visit the docs

Quickly format your code with our new Prettier plugin

Format your code instantly with our Liquid Prettier plugin (1.0.0) for consistent code styles so you can avoid discussing styles and focus on what matters. Available both in-admin and locally in your favorite code editor.

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Shopify Community

Shopify Community is an active channel of 900,000 Shopify merchants, partners, and developers from around the world, ready to share their expertise and experiences. In this community, you can connect with your peers, get support, and engage in meaningful conversations about working with Shopify. Check it out below, and add your voice to important conversations about APIs, SDKs, Shopify Functions, Online Store 2.0, and more.

Join the discussion

Share your thoughts about monitoring and observability when hosting your app

This is your chance to help shape the future of Shopify. We’d like to understand better what you need for monitoring and observability when it comes to hosting your application. How do you know your app is healthy? And how should we alert you to potential issues? Your feedback will help shape Oxygen so it better meets your needs. This survey should take no more than 20 minutes to complete. Thanks for your time, and we look forward to hearing your feedback.

Go to survey

Schedule workflows and fetch data with Shopify Flow

We have exciting news about our ecommerce automation solution, Shopify Flow. You and your merchants can now schedule workflows to run at a specific time and date, without needing a commerce event to kick things off. You can also leverage the new ‘get data’ action to fetch specific Shopify data needed for daily reports. When combined, these new features will help your merchants solve more tasks and get more done with automation. Please note that Shopify Flow is currently only available in English.

Learn more

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