Doing the above is not going magically make Shopify fix this, so in the meantime, all we have are workarounds and yes, they should be posted, to support everyone while we wait.
These are not free. We shouldn’t have to pay to make something work the way it should. We’re already paying! 
And writing out 20 step workarounds that other people might waste their time with instead of complaining isn’t going to make them fix it at all. If they don’t see demand for it, they won’t do ■■■■■
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Learn how to count. 4 steps != 20 steps.
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The workarounds are bringing more value than you are right now, so until you’ve managed to convince Shopify, you can keep your thoughts to yourself and we will post workarounds if we want to. You’re free to ignore them.
It seems that we have a solution.
I spotted a new button and couldn’t find any info so I asked the question.
https://community.shopify.com/post/2375680
I have just created a Non Archived view in Products.
It’s not perfect, however, one click is better than any other option I have seen.
That’s what the workaround I posted earlier is!
You wrote 4 steps with multiple steps within each step that works out to at least 12 steps. But whatever, my point still stands. For people with 100+ archived products, we need a proper solution that doesn’t require multiple steps to achieve this.
Did anyone find a solution to this?
Yes. I think that I would.
You realize, of course, that this would make it so a valid product that had reached 0 available would then NOT show up.
Yes, of course. It’s not an ideal solution, but you’re welcome to offer a better solution 
Also worth noting that archived (deactivated) products also show up in ANY app that imports products such as bundling apps, multi platform inventory mgmt apps, wholesale apps, and download apps. Suddenly, they’re live products again.
It’s a massive pain in the ass … Such a basic feature … you can rest assured it will NEVER be corrected by Shopify.
Pburt16, that’s a problem with the systems that are importing the data or the tools you’re using for the data migration, not a responsibility of Shopify. Export the data using Matrixify, massage it, and then import what you want.
Migrating data from one platform to a variety of other platforms is not a basic feature. At a minimum, you have to qualify which data will be migrated, you have to map fields between systems, and you have to address business logic like item state.
I realize you’re trying to emphasize the need for the original request, but conflating or dramatizing the problem makes it more difficult to solve and less likely that we will ever get any help.
We don’t want archived products to show up by default in the admin interface. Or put differently, we want archived products to be handled just like archived orders.
I’m not talking about migrating data from one platform to another. I’m talking about how Apps from the Shopify App Store interact with data from active Shopify stores.
I appreciate the lecture, but it’s not an unrelated issue and, no, it’s not that difficult from programming perspective to prevent a specific data table from being read/imported by an app. In fact, it’s easy. Given that Shopify relies exclusively on 3rd party apps to provide basic functionality (for an expensive system that provides very little of value out of the box for all their pedestrian tiers), Shopify should be far more cognizant for how Shopify web hooks impact app development.
In terms of UX and inventory management, the fact that archived products to show up by default in the admin interface is lousy—That much we can agree on.
There are innumerable, simple platform upgrades that have languished in these forums for over a decade that have never been addressed by Shopify. Pointing out how one UX/products management issue cascades into otherUX/products management issues doesn’t make it any more or less likely that our voices will be heard. A simple tour of these forums makes that reality crystal clear.
Easy answer, third-party apps can query products by status of active, archived, or draft (https://shopify.dev/docs/api/admin-rest/2024-04/resources/product).
You’re welcome to your opinion, of course, but I think Shopify is feature rich, fairly extensible, and well designed. Over 4.4 million e-commerce sites use it, and there are over 8,000 apps in the Shopify App Store.
Maybe it’s time for you to consider using another e-commerce platform that would more effectively meet your needs.
In the meanwhile, if you want to request changes that get implemented, keep them simple and drama free. They are much easier to understand and quicker to implement. For example, you said it would easy for the admin interface to only show active products by default. Focus on that. Calling the admin interface “lousy” is emotional, subjective, ambiguous, and immeasurable. It makes for a poor product functional requirement, and therefore it’s very unlikely to get addressed.
Honest question, does Shopify every update and fix things like this? Been in business a year with large volume of sales in shop.
But I’ve found between this issue and the average cost of products not updating from purchase orders as a deal breaker
and considering moving off the platform entirely. Seems like the most basic things never get improved and updated with Shopify.
I’m going to say that this isn’t going to be addressed by Shopify. If it does ever get improved it won’t be on purpose, they’ll just accidentally solve it when they update something else. But I’m pretty sure they don’t care about what we think.
Calling a specifc feature implemented in the admin interface “lousy” is perfectly valid given an objective critique of the UX and years of experience with the UI. If I can articulate what can be improved to make a feature of the admin interface more efficient for users, I can call an existing “solution” lousy if my experience warrants it.
Having you generalize a specific critique to claim some kind of professional moral high ground by gas lighting just makes you look like a judgemental dick.
The number of eComm sites that use this platform and the number of apps that exist in the app store are completely irrelevant. Improvements can always be made.
In a word: No.
Yes please oh god yes!