`shopify theme dev` not picking up on file changes

Shopify CLI and Libraries
1

I have reproduced the issue on the latest CLI version.

Yes, I am on the latest version

I have searched existing posts and this report is not a duplicate.

Yes, this isn’t a duplicate

In which of these areas are you experiencing a problem?

Theme

Expected behavior

Local file changes made to various liquid files, CSS/JS assets and JSON should be detected by shopify theme dev and synced to your local development theme, with changes reflected when viewing the site via http://127.0.0.1:9292 as well as the https://<store>.myshopify.com/?preview_theme_id=155386052805.

Actual behavior

File changes are not reflected in either preview URL. Modified a snippets, updated some CSS and changed config/settings_schema.json settings are all ignored. The dev server continues to serve the previous version of these files. Restarting the dev server, hard-refreshing the browser, deleting the .shopify directory, and deleting/recreating the development theme via shopify theme delete -t <id> did not resolve the issue. Running with --verbose showed no errors or relevant output.

Reproduction steps

  1. Run shopify theme dev --store=<store>.myshopify.com
  2. Make a change to a file.
  3. Save the file.
  4. Reload either preview URL (incognito, hard refresh, whatever you want)
  5. Observe that the changes do not appear in the rendered HTML.
  6. Stop the dev server, delete .shopify directory, even run the shopify theme delete -t <id>, then restart — issue still persists.

Verbose output

Output is too long to add here.

Operating system

macOS 26.3

CLI version

3.92.1

Shell

zsh

Nodejs version

v24.13.1

2

Hi @af-brendanr thanks for bringing this up. We will definitely need a full verbose log so we can look into it. I will send you a DM in a sec.

3

Sorry quick follow up. Can you run your changes without using the preview url and just via localhost and tell me if you still encounter the problem?

The preview-url can have some delay in receiving the updated code where using localhost will get instant results.

4

To reiterate, the issue is present with both preview URLs: 127.0.0.1:9292 and myshopify.com

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