Saving, Publishing & Snapshots

Edits in the visual editor never reach customers automatically. Your live storefront keeps serving the most recently published version until you explicitly publish a new one. This article covers how to save your work, push it live, and roll back if something doesn't work out.

Drafts

Changes you make in the editor — adding sections, editing settings, reordering blocks — stay in browser memory until you click Save draft. Save draft writes your current state to the server but keeps it private to you.

Each Save draft overwrites the previous draft — you don't accumulate drafts. There's only ever one draft per theme.

Preview links

Click Preview to open your current draft in a new tab using a private URL. Share that URL with teammates for review before publishing — it shows them exactly what customers will see when you publish, without affecting the live storefront. The preview link is gated to your account by default; share-with-anyone preview links are a setting in Themes.

Publishing

Click Publish to make your draft live. The change reaches customers within a few seconds (the storefront cache propagates almost instantly). Once published:

• The previously-live version becomes a snapshot in your theme's history.
• Your draft is cleared — your next round of edits starts fresh from the just-published state.

Snapshots

Every publish creates a snapshot. Open Themes to see your full history. Each snapshot lists:

• When it was published.
• Who published it.
• A green Published badge if it's the version currently live.

Restoring a snapshot

Click Restore on any old snapshot to instantly publish it again. Your live storefront flips to that exact state — sections, settings, and all — within seconds. Restoration is a hard rollback, but it's not destructive: the snapshot you were just on stays in your history, so you can flip back if you change your mind.

Duplicating a snapshot

Click Duplicate on a snapshot to create a fresh draft based on that version. Useful for "let me try a different design without losing what I have" — the duplicate becomes the new draft, leaving your existing snapshots untouched.

Renaming a snapshot

Snapshots have a default name based on publish time. Rename them so you can find them later — "Pre-launch", "Holiday 2026", "Before the redesign", whatever helps you orient.

Discarding a draft

If your draft is a mess and you want to start over, click Discard draft. The editor reverts to the currently-published state and your draft is deleted. This is irreversible — discarded drafts can't be recovered. If you might want the draft back later, publish it first (then restore the previous snapshot to put the live storefront back).

FAQ

I published something that broke my storefront. What now?

Open Themes and click Restore on the snapshot from before the bad publish. Your storefront returns to that state in seconds. Then go back to the editor, fix the issue in the now-current draft, and publish again.

How long are snapshots kept?

Snapshots are retained indefinitely. Storage cost for theme snapshots is negligible — there's no time-based deletion to worry about.

Why doesn't my published change show up immediately?

Storefront pages are cached for performance. Most changes land within seconds, but if you're seeing a stale page after publishing, hard-refresh your browser (Ctrl+Shift+R / Cmd+Shift+R). If a change still isn't visible after that, check the editor — sometimes a change you thought was published is actually still in your draft.

Can I schedule a publish for a specific time?

Not at launch. Publishing is immediate. For timed launches, the workaround is hiding the section in advance and revealing it via a quick Save → Publish at the launch time.