Changes on theme code not affecting store immediately

Topic summary

Multiple Shopify developers are experiencing significant delays when pushing theme changes to their live stores using the theme watch --allow-live command.

Timeline & Impact:

  • Issue began approximately 2 days ago
  • Previously, changes reflected almost instantly after page refresh
  • Now taking 1-2 minutes minimum for changes to appear on the live store

Support Response:

  • One user contacted Shopify support and received concerning feedback
  • Support indicated that changes made via theme kit are outside their scope of support
  • Shopify recommended making changes directly to the theme as a workaround instead
  • No indication that Shopify plans to address this issue

Current Status:

  • Multiple users confirm experiencing the same problem
  • Speculation that a recent Shopify update may have caused the delay
  • Issue remains unresolved with no official fix timeline
Summarized with AI on November 18. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.

Hi Shopify community,

Currently I m using expanse theme for my Shopify store.

Until last week everything was good, but since last two days I m facing some delay on code change and its effect on store online.

Basically I am using theme watch --allow-live command from my local to push the changes on the file.

It takes at least 1-2 mins to have its effect on my store online, but before it was very quick and I just need to refresh the page to have it affected.

Just wanna know is there anything changed recently on Shopify?

Thank you in advance.

1 Like

I’ve had the same issue for a few days now. I chatted with support and it doesn’t seem like they have any plans to fix the issue in the future. Here’s the response:

“They further explained that changes made to the theme via theme kit is beyond their scope of support and recommended making the changes directly to your theme as a workaround. “

Same here it started 2 days ago for me,
maybe its because of the recent update