How to Change Your Shopify Theme
Preview, install and publish a new Shopify theme without losing your current design or breaking live pages.
Changing theme is safe if you work on a copy and publish only when you are happy. What is not safe is editing your live theme directly and hoping.
Duplicate your current theme
Go to Online Store, then Themes. Open the actions menu on your live theme and choose Duplicate. This is your rollback.
Add the new theme
Use Add theme to install from the Theme Store or upload a theme zip file. It goes into your theme library, not your live store.
Customise the new theme
Click Customize on the unpublished theme and rebuild your homepage sections, colours, fonts, header and footer.
Reconnect app blocks and settings
Themes do not carry across app embeds, custom code or section settings. Re-add reviews, upsells and tracking blocks in the new theme.
Preview thoroughly
Check the homepage, a collection, a product with variants, cart, search, a blog post and your policy pages on desktop and mobile.
Publish
When the preview looks right, click Publish. Keep the duplicate of your old theme for at least a few weeks.
Watch out
Publishing a theme does not migrate custom code you added to your old theme files. List those changes before you switch.
Still stuck? Skip the tutorials.
You've given it a go. If you'd rather have someone sort it out for you, tell us what you need and we'll take it from there.
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Related tutorials
How to Create Navigation Menus in Shopify
Build a main menu, drop-downs and a footer menu that help shoppers find products in two clicks.
Read more elsewhere
Shopify.dev: Online Store 2.0 themes
Developer documentation for sections, blocks and theme architecture. Read this before customising a modern Shopify theme.
Link to an external site. We don't republish other people's content.
