If you’re not sure what Shopify Editions is, every 6 months Shopify releases an Edition which is an announcement of newly released features and features being worked on to look forward to in the future.

This season's Edition was absolute FIRE, with amazing news for Shopify web designers.

The previous edition was mostly for developers, so we predicted that this Edition would be for designers, specifically with lots of updates to the theme editor, and with AI advancements. And we were right, but we would have never predicted that themes were going to have such a massive update, going in a whole new direction.

Let's get into what the major updates were for designers.

1. All New Shopify Themes: Horizon Themes

Shopify released a whole new collection of 10 free themes. But these themes work completely differently than anything we've seen before from Shopify. The themes include a TON of new features that maximize design flexibility, and have AI built in to make editing easy.

Shopify's Horizon theme features:

• 10 whole new free themes created to give ultimate design flexibility.
• Generate custom theme blocks with AI. 
• Generate custom theme sections with AI. This will create a custom section with settings for you which are mobile responsive. We loved seeing how it predicted the settings and additional features we'd want to include but didn't specify! 
• Create custom layouts by inserting theme-wide block types into sections. Each block type has its own settings to adjust the layout, size, appearance, padding, margin and more.
• Groups & Nested blocks: New theme blocks allow you to create groups of blocks which can be repositioned. These blocks allow you to add more content to every section, and the flexibility to adjust the layout of it.
• Customize product cards: Easily add blocks like color swatches, reviews, low stock warnings and plenty of other blocks to product cards (which previously had very minimal customization options)
• More theme styling options, such as styles for different heading types

What's unclear is if "Horizon" is the name for this new type of theme (like when Online Store 2.0 was released and themes had to rebuild in an OS 2.0 version), or if it's just the name for this collection. Shopify calls Horizon their "new design foundation".

Limitations to Shopify's Horizon Themes

We've only had a few hours to play around with Horizon themes, and since this is just the first version of them, we're sure they'll improve. However, we'll still point out the initial limitations we noticed with the new themes and features:

• Can I upload an image for my AI section prompts?

  When prompting the AI to create a custom section block, you are currently limited to only text prompts. It would be amazing to be able to upload an image here in the future so that the outcome would better match your vision.

• How long can I edit a Shopify Magic AI generated section block for?

  It seems you can edit it as many times as you need, until you hit save.

• Can I view previous versions of the AI prompt?:

  If you tweak the prompt on a section generated using AI, it regenerates everything and you lose the previous version of it. Copy and pasting the same prompt as before doesn't mean it will generate the same.

• Why did I lose all my section settings content on the AI generated section block?  

  If you set up your new AI generated section with content and then tweak the prompt, you'll lose all the section content and settings you've added and need to start over. So you'll need to make sure you have everything you want, before adding your content - this can prove a little hard!

• Can I edit the code for my Shopify Magic AI generated section block? 

  Yes! You can right click the block and click 'edit code'. This is very useful for making small edits so you don't need to risk generating the whole section again, just to add a background color for example.

• Why isn't my Shopify Magic AI generated section block working properly?

  Everything is just a bit buggy right now. The AI generation doesn’t always produce exactly what you’ve described, especially when it comes to functionality, and you can find pretty major errors with it. Shopify even advises that an AI section block could cause problems with the whole theme.

• Do I still need to learn or use custom code? 

  Yes, learning code is still very useful so you can make quick changes. But you'll likely be editing existing code, rather than writing from scratch, which makes the process faster.

• Do I still need to use code to add custom fonts?

  Yes. This is a bummer as it’s something needed for many stores. 

• Does Horizon and the other free Shopify themes include premium features?

  The current (first) version of these themes lack some features we like to include in every store like a free shipping progress bar, and upsells in the cart. However, it includes many features you couldn't find in previous free themes, such as product swatches, low inventory indicator, coupons in the cart and a more premium-looking design. 
  

Questions & Answers about Horizon Themes

Our Instagram DMs were rammed today with your questions about all these new updates to themes. So we’ll answer some of the common questions here.

• Are all the new Shopify Horizon themes the same just styled differently?

  Yes, they're all the same, just styled differently. We looked at the sections available across various new themes (eg. Pitch, Savor, Fabric, Ritual, etc.) and the sections are the same, and they've also all received the same theme version updates. This is just like Shopify’s previous collection of free themes which were all based off of the Dawn theme, just styled differently. It makes sense for Shopify to make them all the same because it would otherwise be a lot of work to maintain, provide documentation and support on all of them separately.

• What is the default theme now when you start a Shopify store? Is Horizon the new default theme?

  The default theme is now Horizon when you start a new store. This replaces Dawn which has been the default theme for about three years. 

• Will the AI generation for section blocks feature be coming to premium Shopify themes?

  It looks like yes. Theme developers will need to restructure their themes to make this upgrade, much like they did 3 years ago when Online Store 2.0 came out. Last time it took 6-12 months for themes to all make the transition over to the new theme system.

• Is there a need for premium Shopify themes now?

  It’s too early to say. Possibly not if you have the time to customize the free ones. However, I personally do think there is a reason for premium themes to exist because they do offer more premium options and features. Even with greater flexibility coming with the new free themes, premium themes look “premium” out of the box, and generally have more features than a free theme. In my opinion, theme teams are going to need to be more innovative and see what will make them stand out. 

• Does the 25 section limit still exist on Shopify pages?

  Yes it does, however with new section blocks and nested blocks, it’s much easier to keep things within the limit.

• Can the new Shopify Horizon features replace some apps?

  We think there’s definitely the potential that some apps will become redundant. But other apps will definitely still need to exist. The whole point of apps is to fill the gaps where Shopify or themes don’t natively support, so those gaps will still need to be filled but the gaps may be different now.

• What types of AI generated custom section blocks can you make?

  Our Shopify course Discord has been super chatty today as we explore what can be done with the new features in just minutes or even seconds.
  • Charis experimented with building a bundle product section
  • Chloe created a social proof video section that she was previously using an app for
  • Fabio created a video slideshow block

• Can I use the AI generated section blocks in other themes? 

  We're going to test this out. If it's possible, it will require some tweaking of the code.

2. Better Shopify Theme Editor

The theme editor has gotten a big upgrade as well, with improvements that make it faster to build pages, and organize your editing experience. We saw a few of these updates roll out over the past month and were thrilled as the tiny changes are things that make building stores so much easier. Here are the new features:

• Rename sections and blocks (This helps reduce confusion about which section is which in the sidebar)
• Sections collapsed by default (Meaning that you won’t see all the blocks and nested blocks by default — you’ll need to expand the section to see them. Finally something to keep things looking organized!)
• Copy and paste blocks and sections across pages (An awesome time saver, and helps keeps things consistent)
• Right click for shortcuts (we love the option to open the code file for a particular section right from the theme editor)
• Categories for sections and blocks (Meaning that sections are organized into Image, Text, Video, etc. categories)
• One-click text editing
• Hover to preview in block picker
• Simplified sidebar with conditional settings

The copy & pasting of sections is so helpful, but we'd also love to see global sections that are able to be updated site-wide. 

3. Other Shopify Feature Updates

These next updates are exciting as well but can be summarized much quicker:

• A new free Store Migration app to import product and customer data from WooCommerce, Etsy, Square and more
• One discount for multiple savings. Now certain apps can allow stores to use ONE discount code which can apply to BOTH products and shipping (for example, 20% off plus free shipping with one code)
• Discount code in cart. Horizon themes allow customers to add coupon codes directly in the cart, rather than waiting until checkout
• The Shopify app now accepts tap to pay, making it easy for merchants to make in-person sales
• Sidekick (Shopify’s AI powered ecommerce assistant in the Admin) is now supported in 20 languages and can now generate images
• Sidekick also now allows you to screenshare to talk it through tasks in the admin
• Flat shipping rates now possible when orders are being fulfilled from multiple locations
• Shopify integration with Roblox means that players can purchase from brands directly inside of Roblox
• Shop Pay Installments is now available in Canada
• Thank you and Order status pages got an upgrade a few months ago, but there’s now a guide for this
• Shopify Payments is available in 16 more countries. The reason this is important is because using Shopify Payments unlocks some other platform features.
• Sell from multiple business entities through a single store
• Get payouts in multiple currencies (up to 8 currencies in Europe and Australia)
• Collect duties, taxes and tariffs at checkout OR embed duties and taxes into product prices, and use Tariffguide.ai to help you determine the duty rate for any product
• The option to refund orders to store credit, even when that wasn't the original payment method 

Our Final Thoughts

Flex sections were announced two years ago in the Summer 2023 Edition, and we did see tiny baby step updates on this, but nothing significant, so while we were expecting an update on “nested blocks” in this Edition, we were completely blown away by the enormous change in direction to themes that was announced today. They were really working behind the scenes on this one.

Overall, we love the new AI code generating features but still believe that knowing how to code is the best way to be able to leverage these tools to create the designs you want. We're excited about how this will speed up our workflow and allow us to create better stores! 

We have a lot more to say about two things:

1. The future of premium Shopify themes
2. The role that web designers play in this new trajectory of store building

Look out for our thoughts on these topics coming soon!

Hana Drdla

Hana is one of the co-founders of Luna and a Shopify pro. She teaches the coding portion of Luna's Shopify Course course for designers. She loves working with designers to bring their designs to life on Shopify.

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