Tools for building Shopify themes

The following tools help you quickly scaffold, test, share, and develop Shopify themes.

Shopify CLI 3.x

A powerful command-line tool for building Shopify themes, and exploring Liquid code in a REPL interface.

Shopify Liquid VS Code extension

Use the Shopify Liquid Visual Studio Code extension to improve your local development experience.

Shopify CLI 2.x

The previous major version of Shopify CLI.

Theme Kit

A legacy command-line tool for building Shopify themes.

The following tools can be used by merchants and developers to customize themes in the Shopify admin. As a developer, you should account for these tools when you're developing your theme to ensure the best merchant experience.

Admin theme editor

An interactive editor that lets merchants customize their online store and theme.

Admin code editor

A code editor built into the Shopify admin.

The following tools allow you to access Shopify infrastructure for testing, and help you to safely access merchant stores.

Development stores

A free Shopify account that you can use to build and test themes.

Collaborator accounts

An account that lets you access and manage a merchant's store through the Partner Dashboard.

Theme Access app

An app that grants programmatic access to themes in a particular store. Used with Shopify CLI and Theme Kit.

The Shopify GitHub integration helps you to track and push changes to and from a theme in a Shopify store by using Git.

Shopify GitHub integration

Manage your Shopify theme code by using Git version control.

The following tools help you to optimize and detect errors in your theme code.

Theme Check

A command-line based linter for themes. Also offered as part of the Shopify Liquid Visual Studio Code extension.

Liquid Prettier Plugin

Use the Liquid Prettier Plugin to format your Liquid and HTML in a consistent style.

Shopify Theme Inspector for Chrome

Profile and debug your Liquid template performance with this extension for Chrome Developer Tools.

Lighthouse CI

Ensure that your theme is performant by using the Lighthouse CI GitHub Action.

The following tools help you to learn and write Liquid.

ImageryNew

Learn how to write image tags, and understand how images are dynamically transformed with Imagery.

The Dawn theme is Shopify's example theme. You can refer to it to understand how a theme can be put together, or fork it as a starting point to build your own theme.

Dawn

Use Dawn as an example of how to build a Shopify theme.