I understand the benefits of the new collections model and the additional flexibility it provides.
However, for stores with a large number of collections, the product editor has become much less practical.
My store has around 150 collections, but only about 20 of them are manually assigned. The rest are assigned automatically using collection conditions.
Since the update, all collections appear together in the Collections picker when editing a product. This creates a very long and cluttered list, and it’s no longer clear which collections should be selected manually and which are assigned automatically.
It would be extremely helpful to have a simple option on each collection, for example:
Hide this collection from the product editor
This wouldn’t change how collections work. It would simply allow merchants to hide collections that are always assigned automatically, making the product editor much cleaner and easier to use.
Alternatively, a clear visual label showing whether a collection is automatic or manually managed would also solve the problem.
Rule-base collections show this on hover, manual ones do not, but I agree that showing the distinction would be helpful.
Though I doubt this team monitors this forum. Better options are to either use Support Chat or a topic at dev forum – Introducing the New Collections API (2026-07) — Developer Preview - Products and Orders APIs - Shopify Developer Community Forums
These are peer to peer forums your wishing in the wind.
For ACTUAL feature requests talk DIRECTLY to a shopify support advisor on the help chat.
And don’t use the dev forums for this that’s for development stuff not Admin features for merchants.
http://help.shopify.com/
Then wait and hope.
For the hear and now an actual plan is to just use spreadsheets. Or better PIM systems, or build custom apps.
When you want control over your businesses workflows with data; read: stability and reliability and flexibility.
The admin is a bare minimum offering built to appease a million different least common denominators.
The admin will ALWAYS be changing in ways that will have minor frictions for someone on a platform with 5+ MILLION merchants.
Don’t just use what’s put in front of you by a publicly traded company.
