Filtering without Search & Discovery app

Technical Q&A
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Topic summary

A developer learning Shopify theme development is confused about how product filtering works and whether the Search & Discovery app is required.

Current Issue:

  • Using Dawn theme, attempting to display filters via collection.filters in Liquid
  • Only “Availability” and “Price” filters appear, despite products having various Vendors, Product Types, and Metafields configured
  • Expected these product attributes to automatically populate the filters array

Core Question:
Can filtering work without the Search & Discovery app?

Confusion Points:

  • Official Shopify documentation appears contradictory—some pages suggest filtering works out-of-the-box, others imply the Search & Discovery app is required
  • Shopify Sidekick claimed default filters (availability/price) are the only options without the app, but this answer seems questionable

Status: Seeking clarification on filter requirements and why expected product attributes aren’t appearing as filter options.

Summarized with AI on October 28. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi, I am learning Shopify theme development and I’d like to understand how filtering works.

Does filtering work without the Search & Discovery app?

I am using the Dawn theme, and I am trying to print the filters available in main-collection-product-grid.liquid:

  <ul>
    {% for filter in collection.filters %}
      <li>{{ filter.label }}</li>
    {% endfor %}
  </ul>

…but all I get is “Availability” and “Price”, even though I have products with various Vendors, Product Types and Metafields set up in Shopify Admin.

My understanding is that the collection.filters array should be populated by the Shopify backend, runtime, based on the properties of the products of the given collection. In my case, various product vendors and types should show up, but they don’t.

I find the official documentation confusing. Some pages imply that Storefront filtering should work out-of-the-box, other pages imply that you need Search and Discovery app.

Shopify Sidekick gave me an answer I found nowhere online, so I’m guessing it’s wrong. “Without the Shopify Search & Discovery app, only the default filters (availability and price) are available in your theme using the collection.filters Liquid object.”

What am I missing? Thanks in advance!