Widget Shows on My Test Stores But Not on Shopify Reviewer's Store

Shopify App Store
1

Hi everyone,

My app was rejected twice with the same issue: “Widget not showing in theme editor and storefront.”

The confusing part: Widget works perfectly on all my test stores.

My Setup:

  • Theme App Extension with app embed block (target: body)
  • Widget JS hosted on external server
  • Extension loads script: <script src="https://myserver.com/widget.js" defer></script>
  • Data attributes pass settings from Theme Extension to widget

What Works (My Stores):

  1. Install app
  2. Theme → Customize → App embeds → Enable widget
  3. Widget appears on storefront :white_check_mark:
  4. Toggle off → widget disappears :white_check_mark:
  5. Change color → color changes :white_check_mark:

What Shopify Reviewer Sees:

  • Enables widget in App embeds
  • Saves theme
  • No widget appears on storefront

Screencast shows:

  • They enable the toggle
  • They save
  • Widget doesn’t show
  • No console errors visible

Questions:

  1. Has anyone experienced widget working on your stores but not reviewer’s?
  2. Could there be a timing issue with extension deployment?
  3. Does widget JS need to handle case where merchant isn’t in database?
  4. Any specific requirements for widget to show on fresh installs?

My widget JS currently:

  • Checks for #buythelook-widget-root element
  • Reads data attributes from Theme Extension
  • Renders floating button

Thanks for any insights!

2

I’ve had issues in the past where updated versions of our theme extension did not show up in the dev store but did in production. Some sort of caching I assume.