App extensions

An app extension surfaces the functionality of your app where and when merchants need it most.

For example, your app’s actions can appear as dropdown items in Shopify admin for orders, products, customers, and other resources. You can produce interfaces that easily mimic the Shopify look-and-feel, and make your app seamlessly appear in Shopify POS.

App extensions are useful for apps that require quick, frequent actions from merchants.

Without an app extension, merchants interact directly with your app. Your app relays information to Shopify that gets surfaced back to the merchant through your app.

With an app extension, merchants interact with Shopify. Shopify relays information to your app that gets surfaced back to the merchant through your app extension in Shopify.

Any web application that connects with Shopify’s platform is referred to as an app, regardless of how it’s exposed to end users.

An app extension isn’t an app. It's a mechanism that lets an app add features to certain defined parts of several Shopify user interfaces. Apps that use extensions must adhere to the same authentication and authorization requirements as apps that don’t use extensions.

• Apps using extensions all have the same standard authentication requirements and rate limits.
• Make sure you understand Shopify’s API License and Terms of Use before you begin.

App extensions relate to specific merchant use cases and therefore have varying requirements. See the complete list of available extensions to find out more about their requirements.

Some app extensions are versioned, which allows control over when an extension is published, and a way to rollback changes if issues occur. Publishing an app extension version replaces the current live version served to shops that have your app installed. If an app extension supports versioning, then you can preview a draft of the extension and create a version when you publish it.

You can preview a draft of your app extension in a development store before creating a version.

After you've tested a new version of your extension and are ready to release it to merchants, you can publish it.

If you need to revert changes to your extension, then you can publish a previous version. As a final course of action, you can also unpublish your extension, which makes the extension unavailable for merchants.

Some app extensions need to be reviewed and approved before they are made available in Shopify. Other app extensions are made available as soon you save them. If an app extension needs to be reviewed, then you see Submit for review instead of Save when you create the app extension.

• See the list of available extensions