Developer previews

When a new feature is accompanied by a backwards-incompatible change to our APIs, or a significant change to the online store or the Shopify admin, it's included in a developer preview.

You can test the feature by creating a new development store and enabling the developer preview from your Partner Dashboard.

Each developer preview can include several new features. When you enable a developer preview, you select the preview that includes the features that you want to have access to.

A development store with a developer preview enabled includes all of the features that are available on the Advanced Shopify plan, but the store can't be transferred to another owner or transitioned to a paid plan. To learn more about development stores and their features and limitations, refer to Development stores.

1. From your Partner Dashboard, click Stores.
2. Click Add store > Create development store.
3. In the Development store use section, select Create a store to test and build.

4. In the Store details section, enter a name for your store.

   The store name is used to create the store's myshopify.com URL. This URL can't be changed.

5. Choose the build that you want to use.

   If you select a Developer preview, then you can select a developer preview version from the drop-down list. Development stores that use a developer preview can't be transferred to a merchant.

6. Under Data and configurations, choose whether to start with an empty store, or with a store that's populated with test data generated by Shopify. Stores that start with generated test data can't be transferred to a merchant.

7. Click Create development store.

When you're done working on a development store, you can archive it.

For backwards-incompatible changes, the timeline for developer previews is tied to the API release schedule.

When a stable version introduces a backwards-incompatible change, the feature associated with the change won't be available to a user's Shopify admin until 9 months later, when that version of the API is the oldest supported stable version. So you have 9 months to preview a feature and prepare for it before it's released to users.

To learn more about the API release schedule, refer to Shopify API versioning.

The Checkout and Customer Accounts Extensibility developer preview includes access to the following capabilities:

• Checkout UI extensions: Apps can integrate with Shopify checkout using these extensions to add custom UI and additional functionality to the checkout experience.

  For example, developers can build extensions that capture additional information from customers or show customers a recommended product offer. In the Shopify admin, you can use the checkout editor to place a checkout UI extension in the checkout experience.

• Checkout branding: A set of resources on the GraphQL Admin API to apply styling to checkout like logos, colors, fonts, and more.

• Thank you and order status extensions: Thank you and Order status extensions enable you to add new UI and functionality to the Thank you and Order status pages.

The documentation will be updated as Shopify introduces new extensions types for checkout.

• Customer account UI extensions: Apps can integrate with Shopify new customer accounts using these extensions to add custom UI and additional functionality to the new customer accounts experience.

  For example, developers can build extensions that show loyalty points earned by the customer on the Order index page, or build extensions to create a new page in customer accounts that allows a customer to manage their wishlist.

Learn more about customizing checkout.

Learn how to create a development store.

The following Shopify Function APIs are available in the Discounts Allocator developer preview:

• Discount Allocator API: Provide your own logic for how discounts should be calculated and allocated to a given cart.

Learn more about Shopify Functions.

Shopify Markets is a cross-border management tool that helps users identify, set up, launch, optimize, and manage their international markets - all from a single store. With the developer preview, new development stores can access Shopify Markets.

You can test this feature by enabling the Shopify Markets developer preview on your development store. After setting up your development store and enabling the developer preview, you can access Shopify Markets by going to Settings > Markets.

Learn more about Shopify Markets.

Learn how to create a development store.

The store credit primitive and API developer preview activates store credit on your shop. With this feature you can issue store credit to your customers and they can spend it at checkout. A customer's store credit is visible on their profile page and it can be queried via the GraphQL Admin API.

Store credit can only be spent by customers logged in to new customer accounts.

Learn how to issue store credit in the GraphQL Admin API.

Learn how to create a development store.

The Shopify Plus Global Nav developer preview enables you to test how your embedded apps will look on Shopify Plus stores that feature our global navigation.

By testing your app with the global navigation preview, you can see how your app behaves in a smaller viewport and make sure it's compatible with Shopify Plus shops.

Refer to our guide on how to embed your app within the Shopify admin using App Bridge.

Learn how to create a development store.

The Localization Extensions developer preview enables you to use the GraphQL Admin API to return a tax ID that was collected during checkout.

You can test this feature by enabling the Localization Extensions developer preview on your development store.

Learn how to use the GraphQL Admin API to return a tax ID collected during checkout.

Learn more about localization extensions through our community forum.

Learn how to create a development store.

The Duties and Taxes developer preview gives your development store the ability to charge duties calculated by Shopify during checkout, which avoids surprise charges for customers upon delivery.

Using the 2020-04 version or higher of the GraphQL Admin API, you can fetch duty amounts charged on international orders through checkout. Using the GraphQL Admin API, you can create refunds that include the duty on an entire order or individual line items.

Refer to the guide on how to use duties using the GraphQL API.

Learn more about duties through our community forum.

Learn how to create a development store.

For our Shopify Unite 2019 annual developer conference, we released a special edition of developer preview, which included the following features:

• New online store design experience

• Order editing

• Support for 3D and video media for products

• Selling in multiple languages

• Tax exemptions

• New fulfillment workflows

• Delivery profiles

Going forward, all developer previews will be published as needed. You can learn about the features in each developer preview in the API version release notes.

The Online Store color scheme developer preview gives you access to the following new input setting types for Online Store themes:

• color_scheme
• color_scheme_group

Use color_scheme_group to define the structure of a color scheme in settings_schema.json, and then set values for the color scheme in settings_data.json. You can allow app users to apply these color schemes at the theme, section, or block level using the color_scheme setting, which outputs a color scheme picker.

You can also use the Liquid color_scheme_group object to define new color schemes, so that app users no longer need to edit their CSS or Liquid files to add or remove color schemes.

Learn more about color_scheme and color_scheme_group settings.

The Flex sections developer preview gives you access to the following new platform features:

• Style settings

  • New set of breakpoint-aware customization settings in themes that map directly to CSS properties
  • Easy for theme developers to provide a lot of styling flexibility for merchants.

• Theme Blocks

  • Reusable block Liquid files located in the /blocks folder of the theme
  • Nesting blocks up to eight levels deep using the {% content_for ‘blocks’ %} Liquid tag
  • Multiple presets that showcase settings variations of the same block. Merchants can add these in the theme editor using the block picker.
  • Targeting to sections and other theme blocks
  • Static blocks which enable conditional rendering and the ability for theme developers to specify rendering structure for blocks that should not be moved or deleted

In addition to the theme blocks and style settings documentation, consult the reference theme, which puts all of these concepts together, and install the latest release. Please provide feedback using the GitHub Discussion Board.

Learn more about Theme blocks and how to access the Flex sections developer preview.

The Increased Variants developer preview enables you to use the GraphQL Admin API to create and edit products with up to 2000 variants. You can test the new APIs by enabling the Increased Variants developer preview on your development store.

Many of the existing APIs used for working with products in the Shopify admin are changing or being deprecated to increase the variant limit. Testing your app and its workflows with the new APIs in the developer preview will enable you to make sure that all your app's use cases are well supported. More importantly, it will allow you to provide feedback on the APIs before they're released to a stable release version.

Post your questions and comments on the APIs on the New Products API board of the .dev Community.

Learn about the new product model and resources.

Learn about the changes to the product-related resources in GraphQL and REST Admin APIs.

Learn how to create a development store.