Canvas lays out every page of a store in one visual workspace, where merchants can edit directly or describe what they want and have Sidekick build it. It’s launching alongside the online store editor and will roll out to merchants over the coming days.
Many merchants rely on your app to power their storefront, so we want to share what Canvas means for it at launch:
Canvas doesn’t support theme app extensions yet.
If a merchant creates or duplicates a theme in Canvas, your app’s blocks and embeds won’t be available in that theme for now.
Themes edited in Canvas also won’t appear when your app lists a store’s themes.
Everything else stays the same: your app continues to work in the online store editor and on merchants’ existing themes, and there’s nothing you need to change today.
In addition to theme app extension compatibility, Canvas does not yet support Rollouts, Markets, or Translations.
This reflects how early Canvas is, not a decision to leave apps behind. We expect to support theme app extensions before Canvas becomes the default editor, and we don’t expect you to need to update your app when that happens.
@Jordan_Graham - Is there any rough timeframe for when theme app extensions are expected to be supported in Canvas?
It seems pretty concerning, and honestly a little crazy, to roll out and recommend (I assume) a new storefront editing experience to merchants when apps and app blocks aren’t supported yet, especially given how heavily so many Shopify stores rely on apps for their storefront functionality.
Even a rough idea of whether we’re talking weeks or months would be really helpful for app developers. Some of my apps are almost entirely extension-based, so I can already see potential problems coming from this.
Between fake reviews (still as big a problem as ever…), forced modals appearing over our apps, losing/changing metrics from the partner platform and now new Shopify features launching without app support, us developers are taking a bloody beating at the moment
We do not want to meet Canvas! We are overwhelmed with all these changes! Enough! We do not have billion dollar market cap with 100s of developer to keep up!
I think shopify is trying to please investors: rushing releases, skipping QA, forgetting common sense, forgetting good engineering, screwing companies who helped them to grow, and embracing mediocrity.
That’s the beginning of the enshitification process.
You have to think that this release not only makes it impossible to use app blocks, but also kills agencies that have been developing quality themes for ~10 years, they are some of their largest partners, and none of them has been notified ahead of time as far as I know. This will lead to people losing their job under a few month. The minimum if they did care was to notify them before so they can review their strategy and business plans.
actually OP sent us an email 1 hour prior announcing Canvas to everybody else… with “we understand this will be disruptive to you, so I wanted to reach out directly to start the conversation.” Conversation about what exactly?
Hi, I’m trying to understand how Canvas themes work under the hood. Is Canvas basically a new editor on top of the same Liquid themes (JSON templates, sections, blocks, etc.), or are these themes built differently?
Our app renders pages through an app proxy using the store’s theme code, so the results page looks like the rest of the store. I understand Canvas themes don’t show up in the Admin API at all currently, so we can’t see what’s inside them. Is that going to change? And will app proxy pages still render normally inside a Canvas theme’s layout?
@David_Arbias Canvas is still early. We’re sprinting to getting apps working in Canvas. That’s coming soon.
Apps still work in the theme editor though so merchants who depend heavily on apps can still use the editor to customize their theme, and they can reach for Canvas to play around and experiment.
I’ve never seen any store that doesn’t depend on apps, including mine, unless they are on hydrogen, which is also another part of Shopify that doesn’t work with theme app extensions.
I’ll take this as an admission that we’ll have to prepare for an avalanche of support requests with a simple answer: “Apps do not work with Canvas, please use a real theme instead” or to just abandon theme app extensions altogether and tell users to copy and paste our script on their website.
I took google and judgeme as an example of apps that can’t be just vibe coded by a senior programmer let alone a new merchant with a chat gpt wrapper.
Or maybe they just don’t care about apps working with Canvas long-term because they think merchants will be able to vibecode a lot of their functionality directly in Canvas, not just the theme layout. Obviously that doesn’t replace everything a mature app does at the moment, but i think that’s their end goal.
This change is going to affect devs everywhere. Shopify wanted devs to become partners to help push and promote their platform - seems like they aren’t interested in that anymore. As a Partner, this change means there’s no longer any need of my design/development services, so what’s the point of me recommending Shopify anymore?
Please note: There is thing named “Generate App”… inside canvas, If the theme design can be replaced with Canvas, Obviously Apps too. In fact Apps are easy for AI than a Design. You will see Create Stunning designs and Apps as per your requirement for free - Banner Soon Everywhere. Partners, get ready you can still be affiliates to bring in customers, So Partners turned into Marketing Professionals if they wish… Count Down may not in months, may be days for Theme and App Store.
with “we understand this will be disruptive to you, so I wanted to reach out directly to start the conversation.” Conversation about what exactly?