If something disappeared after a Shopify theme update, the theme you replaced usually still has it. Find the previous theme in your theme library, work out which type of customization is missing, and copy it back into the updated theme. You rarely need to roll back the whole theme. Do that first only when the missing piece is costing you sales.
Shopify's updater carries most customizations forward, but it can still drop some. When we updated our own store from Horizon 4.1.5 to 4.2.0, every code change, template, and theme editor setting came across. Ten custom English text strings did not, and our storefront showed Shopify's default wording until we compared the two themes.
If your theme broke after a code edit, an app, or a Theme Editor change rather than an update, use our guide to recover a broken Shopify theme instead.
What Shopify copies to an updated theme
According to Shopify's theme update documentation, the updated theme receives:
- Theme settings, plus section and block settings, including images, text, and data sources
- Page layouts, including added, reordered, hidden, and removed sections and blocks
- Templates you created
- App embed and app extension settings
- Wording changes made in the theme content editor
- Code edits by you or an app, when they don't conflict with the update
That list covers most of what merchants change, but check the result anyway. Gaps usually come from code edits that conflicted with the update and from settings that a major version removed or changed. Custom text can go missing too, as ours did, so check it even when everything else looks right.
Find the previous theme
Go to Online Store > Themes. When you publish an update, Shopify moves the theme it replaces to Draft themes. That theme is your reference copy. Keep it until you have checked everything below.
Our theme library during the update, with Shopify's updated copy above the previous theme. Shopify reported that our code edits were included, and they were. Our custom text still went back to the defaults.
If you cannot find a previous theme, Shopify may have applied an automated update. Shopify's theme developer documentation describes these as bug and security fixes that replace the published theme in place, without creating a new theme. They only run when your theme's code files are unmodified, so they are unlikely to remove code customizations. For individual files, the code editor's Timeline view can restore an earlier version, with limits: it restores one existing file at a time, cannot recover deleted files, and has no history for files in the assets folder. A downloaded copy of the theme or a Git history is the only complete backup.
Check each type of customization
Work through these in order. The first check is the one that found our problem.
Theme text and translations
Custom wording is easy to miss because the page still looks complete. Only the words change. In our update, the lost strings included:
| Where it appears | Our text | After the update |
|---|---|---|
| Cart link back to the store | Continue exploring | Continue shopping |
| Contact form message field | What would you like to fix, change, or build? | Comment |
| Cart note field | Leave a note | Special instructions |
| Cart tax and shipping note | (hidden) | Taxes, discounts and shipping calculated at checkout. |
A few checkout texts, such as the tip message and the link on the Thank you page, went back to the defaults as well.
Our contact form in Shopify's updated copy, and the same form after we restored our text.
To check your store, open the previous theme's actions menu and select Edit default theme content. Search for any wording you remember changing, then search for the same entry in the updated theme. For a complete list, open Edit code in both themes and compare the files in the locales folder, starting with the default language file, such as en.default.json. Every entry with a different value is either your customization or a change in the new version.
To restore the text, enter it again in the updated theme's theme content editor, or paste the entry into its locale file. Then load the page where the text appears and confirm it on the live storefront.
Code edits
A code edit that conflicts with the update is left out. To find one, compare your previous theme's files with the updated theme's files. Differences come from two sources: the new version's own changes and your missing edits. A clean copy of your old theme version separates the two. Any difference between that clean copy and your previous theme is a customization, and you can check each one against the updated theme.
Shopify publishes the code for its free themes on GitHub. Dawn tags every version. Horizon has no version tags, but each release is a commit titled with its version, such as "Horizon v4.1.5", and you can download the files from that commit. For a paid theme, ask its developer for the original files of your version.
Reapply each missing edit to the new version's code. Copying the old file over the new one can replace fixes and features the new version depends on. Our Horizon update workflow shows how we run this three-way comparison and carry each change forward.
When Shopify says code edits could not be included
If your theme library shows "Theme added: code edits could not be included," Shopify added the updated theme but could not merge your code edits into it. Your edits still exist in the previous theme. Shopify may warn you about this before you add the update, with a message that your code changes won't be included because one or more changes conflict with the update.
A conflict happens when you or an app edited a file that the new version also changed, so Shopify cannot combine the two automatically. In one Shopify Community report, the notice added "Rebase failed with conflicts" and listed the conflicting files, all sections the merchant had customized. If your notice lists files, save the list and start with those files. Shopify's documentation does not say whether your other code edits are carried over when this happens, so check every file you customized with the comparison above.
Keep the updated copy as a draft until you have reapplied the missing edits and tested the pages that use them.
Theme editor settings, Custom Liquid, and custom CSS
Section settings, Custom Liquid blocks, and the custom CSS fields in the theme editor are saved with your theme editor settings, which Shopify copies to the updated theme. They still go missing when a major version removes a setting, section, or block, or changes the values a setting accepts. Open the affected pages in the theme editor for both themes and compare the sections side by side. Also check your global theme settings, such as colors, typography, and buttons.
Templates and template assignments
Each custom template is a file in the theme, and each page or product stores the name of the template it uses. One merchant reported in the Shopify Community that pages created shortly before a Horizon update showed the default template afterward. In our update, the one page template and three product templates we had created since the previous update all came across, and their pages still used them. If a page switched to the default template, check whether the template file exists under templates in the updated theme. If it is missing, recreate it from the previous theme's file and check the page's template assignment. Report the case to Shopify Support with screenshots from before and after the update.
App embeds and app blocks
Open App embeds in the theme editor of the updated theme and compare it with the previous theme. Then check the pages where app blocks appear, such as product reviews or subscription options. If an app added code to your theme files, check with the app developer that the app still works with the new version.
Roll back first if the loss affects sales
If the missing piece breaks something customers need, such as the cart, product options, or a checkout-related app, publish the previous theme first and fix the updated theme as a draft. Preview the previous theme and repeat the step that fails before you publish it. If the preview fails too, the update did not cause the problem.
After a rollback, reapply anything you changed on the updated theme after publishing it, because the previous theme does not have those changes. Check App embeds as well, since each theme keeps its own settings. If you created a template on the updated theme, pages assigned to it need that template in the previous theme too, so check them after the rollback.
Check the next update before you publish it
- Keep a list of customizations. Include custom code, custom templates, app embeds, and every wording change in the theme content editor.
-
Compare text as well as code. Check the default language file in the
localesfolder against the previous theme before you publish. - Keep a copy outside Shopify. A downloaded theme or a Git repository lets you compare any two versions and restore files that Timeline cannot.
- Keep the previous theme until you finish checking. Shopify stores can hold 20 themes, or 100 on Shopify Plus, so remove older copies you no longer need.
How a theme is customized decides how much of it survives the next update. When we build for a store through our Shopify Feature Development service, we start with the theme's native sections, blocks, and settings. When custom code is necessary, we keep it in separate files where practical, keep edits to the theme's own files small and clearly marked, and avoid changes that are likely to conflict with future versions. Shopify's updater can then carry more of the work forward, and anything it leaves out is quick to find and reapply.
If you can't find what changed, or the missing customization needs code work in the new version, our guide on how to fix a Shopify bug explains what to send a developer so they can start from the right place.