A team with both engineers and non-engineers is struggling to prevent accidental changes to their live Shopify theme. Their workflow uses a master branch for the published theme and a design branch for experimentation, but faces two key problems:
Main Issues:
Save and Publish buttons are positioned too close together in the UI, risking accidental publishing
The live theme can still be edited directly through the Theme page, bypassing GitHub PR protections and causing desynchronization
Proposed Solutions:
Access Control Approach:
Restrict Publish permissions to specific team members
Have non-engineers work in duplicate themes that require approval before merging to master
Use Shopify CLI with GitHub integration to enforce code review before deployment
Backup Strategy:
Regularly download the live theme from Shopify Admin (Online Store → Themes → Download)
Store downloaded theme files as recovery backups
Re-upload if accidental changes occur
Key Limitation: Shopify currently doesn’t offer native UI-level locking for live themes, so protection relies primarily on permission management and disciplined workflows rather than technical safeguards.
Summarized with AI on October 24.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
We’re just starting with our shop and we have both engineers and non-engineers working on the themes.
We’re trying to keep master as the published branch / theme, and leaving a design branch for non-engineers to work.
We have two issues with the workflow:
Saving/Publish buttons are too close to each other in the editing UI
Master can still be customized through the Theme page and even if changes are blocked through PRs on master, they still display live and all that happens is the de-sync of the two.
Is there anything we can do to keep the live theme safer?
Great that you are setting up a structured workflow early that saves a ton of headaches later. From your description, it sounds like you want to:
Separate design experimentation from the live theme
Prevent accidental edits on master / published theme
A few options i have for you:
Lock down access: Limit who has Publish permissions in Shopify Non-engineers can still work in duplicate themes without risking overwriting.
Use theme duplicate: Treat Design as a duplicate theme for edits. Once reviewed, merge into master and publish. This way, live remains untouched until you approve.
Git + Shopify CLI: Some teams use Shopify CLI linked to GitHub so only approved code changes get pushed live bypassing manual publish clicks.
But, Shopify doesn’t currently let you lock a live theme from the admin UI, so the safeguard usually comes down to permissions + workflow.
I have set this up for a few teams before so engineers and content/design folks can work without stepping on each other. If you will like, I can walk you through a setup that keeps live safer and synced with your repo?
It’s fact that the button for the Customization for the live theme and the Draft theme. But there is more better way in which you can keep the live theme safe.
Here are the steps that you need to follow.
Go to Shopify Admin.
Online Store
Themes
Click on the three dots of the live theme and then click on Download.
