Click "View" from product page deactivates theme preview

[robbiesherrard]

Short description of issue

Clicking “View” from the product page in Shopify admin deactivates theme preview

Link to Shopify Store

all stores

Reproduction steps

Online Store > Themes > Theme library

Click the three dots on any theme other than the main theme, and click “Preview”.

That theme is now activated.

Go to any product in the store, and click “View”.

The previously activated theme is now deactivated, and the main theme is now activated.

Additional info

When showing clients new features, you almost always develop the new feature on a preview theme, and then send a link to the page of the new feature with the ?preview_theme_id query parameter appended to activate the preview theme.

Clients often accidentally deactivate their theme previews via the method mentioned above, and then get confused as to why they can’t see the new feature.

When you click “View your online store” from the sidebar, you run into the same issue where the preview theme becomes deactivated.

My request is: I’d like the “View” link on the product page and the “View your online store” link from the sidebar to not deactivate the preview theme.

What type of topic is this

Feature request

Upload screenshot(s) of issue

[Alan_G]

Hey @robbiesherrard - the “view” button in the product page is intended to bring the merchant to the live page on the currently active theme, so this is expected behaviour at the moment. That said, I just want to clarify, is it that they then navigate away from the product page and wonder why they’re not seeing the new theme or noticing that the preview changes aren’t showing up in the live theme?

I definitely agree it’s confusing, so I’d be happy to set up a feature request for something like “view in theme preview” as an option on the product page if that makes sense. I can’t guarantee that we’d integrate the feature or a timeline for when it would be implemented, but happy to log a formal request for you for sure - hope to hear from you soon!

[robbiesherrard]

Awesome, thanks for the response @Alan_G!

Let’s say you build a new section and add it to the ABC product page on a test theme. You send the client a preview link like mystore.myshopify.com?preview_theme_id=1234556789.

They click your link to activate the theme, but then go into ABC’s product page in the admin and then click “View”, assuming they’ll be able to view the new section on that product page on the test theme, but the test theme has been deactivated so they can’t see the new section.

Though you gave me the idea that I could just create a really simple admin action extension to add the action “View in theme preview”. This does the trick!

[Alan_G]

No worries @robbiesherrard - that’s a great workaround! I’ll mark this as solved for now, but I’ve set up a feature request for you as well just so we can look into making this a native feature. Let me know if I can help out further at all.