Dawn theme filtering customization

Retired Boards Appdev Store Design

Topic summary

Goal: simplify the Dawn theme “color” filter to use generic colors (e.g., Red, Green) instead of numerous product-specific variant names tied to design names.

Initial guidance suggested custom coding (Liquid/JavaScript) to create a separate filter set not bound to variants. However, the shared solution avoided code by using Shopify metafields.

Solution implemented:

  • Create a product metafield (type: text) named “Color.”
  • For each product, fill this metafield with a generic color value (e.g., “Grey”).
  • In Admin > Navigation (filters settings), add the metafield “color” as a storefront filter.

Outcome: the collection filter now surfaces a concise, generic color list rather than variant-specific names, enabling customers to filter by single or multiple generic colors.

Open questions: how to display color swatches instead of the default checkboxes, and a request for a visual example. No responses yet to these follow-ups, so the thread remains partially unresolved.

Summarized with AI on February 3. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hi-

I have chosen “color” as one of my filters on Dawn theme- However the name of the colors on specific products is way too many and I would like to define another list for the color filter that would be more generic. How can I do that?

Thanks,

Rosa

1 Like
2

Hello There,

Please share your store URL and Screenshot.
So that I will check and let you know the exact solution here.

3

Thanks so much!!

here is a preview link of our website:

https://laneh-co.myshopify.com/collections/cushions

As you can see on top of the page, it shows the filter “color” and when you select that, you see a long list of color names picked from the product specific color variant. However, the product specific color variant is the “design” name of the colors. I don’t want the color filter to pull from there. I want to define a generic list of colors and then perhaps add those generic colors as tags to each product. This way the customer can just filter by “red” or “red”/“green” together and they see all the products that have “red” or/and “green” tags.

Does that make sense?

4

Hi,

I think I understand what you mean. The filter currently in Dawn is associated with the product variants. If you want a different set of filters, we have to create a list of filter (means you have to define the colors), then use it as a filter, basing on the product variants. This will require liquid codes and javascript codes.

5

Exactly, my question is how do I do that?

6

For anyone who has the same question- @Savior helped me in a private message and found a solution-

So, first you have to make a metafield for products- and choose text as the content type

Then you can name that metafield “Color”

Then you go into each specific product and identify the generic filter you want for ex “Grey”

Then you go to navigation and from the list of filters select the metafield “color” as your filter

and you have what you need now :slightly_smiling_face:

3 Likes
7

Can you explain how you showed the color swatches instead of the standard checkbox?

1 Like
8

Do you have a visual of this? Thanks