App extensions

App extensions surface 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.

An example of an app interacting with a merchant without an app extension

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.

An example of an app interacting with a merchant with an app extension

View available extension points

Requirements

App extension versioning

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.

App extension reviews

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.

The review process for app extensions is similar to the App review process. After you submit your app extension for review, Shopify sends you emails with your results.

Tutorials

Tools