Do preview links for products currently unavailable on your online store have an expiration? They seem to work then all of a sudden, don’t. I need to be able to share the product page with others before going live.
Topic summary
Preview links for unpublished Shopify products appear to expire quickly, making pre‑launch sharing difficult. Participants reported expirations as short as ~1 hour and possibly under 24 hours, with no exposed setting to extend the default.
An initial workaround suggested copying the store’s theme-level “Preview” link (via right‑click) and sharing that URL, which was claimed to never expire. However, this only applies at the theme/template level; a screenshot shows no copy option for draft product pages.
Investigation found that unpublished (draft) products cannot be directly linked; attempts to use a theme preview URL with key and preview_theme_id appended to a draft product path returned 404. Published products and other pages can be previewed by appending those parameters to their URLs (e.g., product path + key + preview_theme_id).
Latest update: the earlier method is no longer valid, and a new video outlines two ways to generate non‑expiring URLs. Details are in the linked videos, which are central to the solution. The thread’s resolution is partial/ongoing.
1 Like
I’d love an answer to this as well. Preview links seem to expire very quickly (24 hours or less?) Is there a way to change the default?
2 Likes
So there is a way. When you click actions you see a preview. Right-click and copy this link instead and share it. This will always give you a preview link that never expires. Tagging @Michael_Pietrza https://youtu.be/wRB2_tovFXI
1 Like
Hi Mitch, that appears to only work for the “Preview” at the store template level. When I right-click on the “Preview” button on my draft product page, there is no option to copy:
Hoping for any solutions on extending the 1-hour expiration for product page previews.
-Tristan
Hi Tristan.
My reply was mainly aimed at the above and nothing more. But I will investigate to see if there is a way. But the issue is the preview button on a product page doesn’t go through a master link. Not sure if you can reverse engineer this but If I find a way over the weekend I will update this video. Let the puzzle begin.
Me again.
So I have spent about 2 hours on this and have discovered that it is not possible to link an unpublished product. You can however link directly to a published product/collection/blog etc. If you use the same method as above and change the URL, it will open up that page example.
Theme preview link that doesn’t expire:
After “https://mycoolstore.myshopify.com/” add in the product URL so “https://mycoolstore.myshopify.com/product/name-of-product” so the final URL will look like
I tried doing this with the URL of the draft product but just links to a 404 page. If I discover a way I will let you know.
Thanks Mitch! Appreciate you trying. We’re using a more time consuming workaround for the current product launch and it’s going to work out.
-Tristan
So updating my last comment with e new attached video as I have since discovered a new way as the old one no longer is valid. Turns out there is 2 ways to get a URL that will never expire. Enjoy.
1 Like