A new theme can look perfect in a demo and still break something on your own store: a missing app widget, a menu that wraps badly on a phone, a product page with no size chart. The good news is that Shopify lets you try a theme in full before any customer sees it. This guide walks through a safe testing routine: how to add a theme as a draft, preview it, work on it in the theme editor, share it for feedback and publish it with a way back.
Start with a draft, never the live theme
Only one theme is published on a Shopify store at a time. Every other theme sits in the Draft themes section of Online Store, where you can preview and edit it without changing what visitors see. That is the space you test in.
How a theme gets into your drafts depends on where it comes from:
- Free theme from Shopify: in Online Store, find it under Discover themes and click Add.
- Paid theme from the Theme Store: click Try theme on the theme's page. It appears in Draft themes with a Theme trial label. You can try up to 19 paid themes at once, and the customisations you make during the trial are kept if you buy it.
- Theme from a developer as a ZIP file: in Draft themes, click Import theme > Upload zip file, choose the file and click Upload.
Two limits are worth knowing before you start. Basic, Grow and Advanced stores can hold up to 20 themes (Shopify Plus allows 100), so you may need to clear out old drafts first. And you can't edit the code of a theme that is still on trial. Theme settings in the editor are fine, but code changes have to wait until you buy it. Shopify's guide to adding, previewing and buying themes has the full details.
If you are still choosing between several themes, our guide on how to choose a Shopify theme for your niche covers the questions to ask before you shortlist one.
Back up your current theme first
Before you change anything, make a copy of the theme that is live today. In Online Store, open the actions menu (the ⋯ button) next to the theme and click Duplicate. The copy appears in your theme library as "Copy of" followed by the theme's name.
Keep in mind what a theme backup does and doesn't hold. Your products, collections, menus, pages, blog posts and files in Content > Files are store content, not part of the theme. They stay where they are whichever theme is published. What a duplicate protects is the theme itself: its settings, sections and any code edits.
For a wider safety net that also covers store data, see our round-up of Shopify backup apps.
Preview the theme with your real content
A preview shows the draft theme on your own store, with your own products, in a normal browser tab. To open one:
- In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store.
- Find the theme in Draft themes and open its actions menu (⋯).
- Click Preview.
A preview bar sits at the top of the page. From it you can switch to a different country or language under View as, click Edit theme to jump into the theme editor, or click Close preview to go back to your published theme. Click near the top of the bar to collapse it so it doesn't hide the header.
Now click through the store the way a shopper would. A useful test route:
- Homepage: do the hero, featured collections and announcement bar make sense with your images and copy?
- Navigation: open every menu and drop-down. Long menus that worked in your old theme can wrap or overflow in a new one. Our guide to Shopify navigation menus and drop-downs helps if you need to restructure them.
- Collection pages: check filters, sorting and how product cards look with your real product titles and photo shapes.
- Product pages: test a product with many variants, one with a single variant, one that is sold out and one with a long description.
- Cart: add items, change quantities and remove them. Check the cart drawer or cart page on both desktop and phone.
- Search, blog, contact and policy pages: these are easy to forget and often look unstyled.
Work through the theme editor
Click Edit theme on the preview bar, or on the theme in Draft themes, to open the theme editor. This is where most of your testing turns into fixes.
Check every template
Use the page selector in the editor's top bar to move between templates: home page, products, collections, pages, blog posts, cart and more. If your store uses custom product templates, open each one. A theme change is the moment those templates are most likely to need rebuilding, and our guide to creating a custom product template shows how.
Test on a phone-sized screen
Toggle the mobile preview button in the top bar to see the theme on a mobile screen, and click it again to return to desktop. Spend real time here: tap targets, sticky headers, the cart drawer and image crops all behave differently on small screens. Also open the preview link on your own phone, since nothing beats a real device.
Turn your apps back on
This is the step people most often miss. Shopify notes that apps you set up for your old theme won't be active by default in a new theme, so you need to re-activate them. In the theme editor, click the App embeds icon in the sidebar, switch on the toggle beside each app you use and click Save. Then check for app blocks, such as reviews or size charts, that you placed inside sections in your old theme and add them again where they belong.
Use undo carefully
Undo (Ctrl+Z on Windows, ⌘+Z on macOS) steps back through your unsaved changes one at a time. Once you click Save, you can't undo those changes any more. That's another reason to have a duplicate of the theme before a big round of edits.
Share the preview and get feedback
A second pair of eyes catches things you stop noticing. From the preview, click the link button on the preview bar to copy a preview URL, then send it to a colleague, a friend or the developer helping you.
- Anyone with the link can view the store in that theme without logging in.
- Shopify says these visitor previews expire 2 days after the URL is created, so make a fresh link if feedback takes longer.
- The theme doesn't need to be published to be shared, but you can't share a preview of your published theme this way.
Ask reviewers to do one specific task, such as "find a gift under 50 and add it to the cart", rather than "tell me what you think". You'll get far more useful notes.
Check speed and checkout before you publish
Run your draft through the same speed checks you'd use on your live store. Heavy hero videos, sliders and extra fonts can make a theme slower than its demo once your own images are in. Our practical checklist for speeding up a Shopify store covers what to look at.
Then confirm customers can actually buy. If you are on a paid plan, you can place test orders using Shopify's test gateway or Shopify Payments test mode. Test orders aren't charged, but while payments are in test mode real customers can't place orders, so switch it back off as soon as you finish.
Publish, then keep a way back
When the draft passes your checks, publish it. In Online Store, find the theme in Draft themes and click Publish, or click Publish on the top bar of the theme editor and confirm in the window that opens.
Your previous theme moves to Draft themes with its changes intact. If something goes wrong after launch, you can publish the old theme again in a couple of clicks while you fix the new one. After publishing, repeat a quick version of the test route on the live store: homepage, a product, the cart and checkout.
If you want to see how a theme behaves before you even add it, you can click through the live demos of every eComify theme at demo.ecomify.net or browse all eComify Shopify themes.
FAQ
Can customers see a theme I'm testing?
No. Visitors only see your published theme. A draft is visible to you in preview and to anyone you send a preview link to.
Do my edits carry over if I buy a theme I'm trying?
Yes. Shopify keeps the customisations you make during a theme trial when you buy the theme.
Will switching themes delete my products or pages?
No. Products, collections, menus, pages, blog posts and files are store content, not part of the theme, so they stay in place when you publish a different theme.
How long does a shared preview link last?
Visitor preview links expire 2 days after you create them. Create a new link from the preview bar whenever you need one.
