Customizing themes for markets

Store Design

Topic summary

A user is attempting to customize a Shopify 2.0 theme for different Markets but cannot find the expected market selection dropdown in the theme editor, despite having created and activated markets.

Setup Context:

  • Markets are organized by niche (not geolocation)
  • Different subdomains serve different product catalogs (e.g., pets.my-market.com for pet products, pod.my-market.com for print-on-demand)
  • Goal is to customize homepage elements like Hero Banners per market

Suggested Troubleshooting:

  • Verify theme supports Markets localization (not all 2.0 themes include this)
  • Check if Geolocation app is needed (though this may not apply to subdomain-based markets)
  • Look for country/language selector settings in Header section
  • Ensure working with published theme, as unpublished themes may have limited localization features

Current Status:
The issue remains unresolved. A second user reports the same problem—their market dropdown disappeared from the theme editor despite having active markets, suggesting this may be a broader platform issue.

Summarized with AI on October 27. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi,
I’m new to Shopify :wink:
I want to customize the theme for Markets
For my test I chose a theme 2.0 but when I followed the help instructions I didn’t have the dropdown to select the market which I have created and activated before.

Check my attached document, which explains it better.

Thanks in advance
Uwe

1 Like
2

Hi @Inthanet

Welcome to Shopify, and congrats on getting started with Markets!

If you’re not seeing the dropdown to select a market (even after creating and activating it), here are a few things to check:

Theme Compatibility

Make sure your 2.0 theme supports Markets localization. While it’s a 2.0 theme, not all themes include the necessary locale selectors out of the box. Shopify’s Dawn theme does, for example.

Geolocation App

Shopify doesn’t automatically add a market selector to your storefront. You might need to install the Shopify Geolocation app (free) from the App Store, which adds language and country selectors to your store.

Header Settings

Open your theme editor (Customize) > check the Header section > and look for the option to enable country/language selector. Not all themes have this turned on by default.

Publishing the Theme

If you’re editing a theme that isn’t published yet, some localization settings may not be fully available. Try testing on the live theme or previewing with the Geolocation app installed.

3

Hi, thanks for the information.
The markets I created are not based on GEO Location, they are assigned to Niches

As an example,

my-market.com is the main shop, which includes all catalogs.
pets.my-market.com focuses on pet products and includes only the pet product catalog
pod.my-market.com focuses on Print-On-Demand products and uses the pod product catalog

I want to use the customization to change the homepage look (Hero Banner,…)

In the Shopify help pages, I found this information, which sounds good, but I do not have the mentioned dropdown

Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.

Click Customize next to the theme that you want to edit.

Click Store default to open the markets’ menu.

Select the market that you want to customize.

Make your desired customizations to sections or blocks for that market, or add new sections or blocks.

Click Save.

4

Did you ever solve this issue with shopify support? My markets dropdown is also gone in the theme editor (was previously there) even though I have a few markets active in the admin.