Hiding product from online store and still make it buyable

Shopify Apps

Topic summary

A developer is building a public donation app for Shopify and needs to hide a donation product from the online store while keeping it purchasable through checkout links triggered from a cart page checkbox. Shopify’s app review team required this hiding functionality without relying on custom Liquid code in merchant themes, but the provided documentation links offered no clear solution.

Key Challenge:

  • Products must be “active” and published to the online store channel to remain buyable, creating a visibility conflict
  • Manual Liquid or JavaScript solutions exist but aren’t scalable for a public app serving multiple stores

Proposed Solutions:

  • SEO metafield approach: Add seo.hidden=1 metafield to products via Shopify admin or Metafield API to hide from search engines and sitemaps (though unclear if this fully removes storefront visibility)
  • JavaScript workaround: Detect special product tags and hide/disable add-to-cart buttons on product pages
  • Third-party apps: Install apps like Wholesale Lock Manager or Locksmith to restrict product visibility to specific customer segments

The discussion remains open with no definitive programmatic solution confirmed for public app requirements.

Summarized with AI on November 2. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi,

I am creating a public donation app and I want to hide the donation product from the online store so that it’s not directly visible and accessible in the online store.

I have created the checkbox in the cart page and when users check the box and check out, the product will be added to checkout via checkout links. This is done successfully. Now, the problem is only hiding products from online stores and still making them buyable. I know this can be done with custom liquid coding in the template but since it is public app. I need this to be hidden without any custom liquid coding.

The requirement of hiding the donation product is from Shopify when I tried to submit the public app. Since its requirement from Shopify itself there must be some solution for it.

They did provide some helpful links that I have mentioned below and these do not have any solution. Please help.

https://community.shopify.com/c/store-feedback/how-to-hide-a-product-but-keep-it-buyable/m-p/1373910

https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-design/creating-donation-product-with-desired-amount-option-in-simple/m-p/656908

Thank you

2

I am looking for the same solution. In order to make the product buyable, it must be active and published on the online store channel.

Liquid is also possible but it’s manual and time-consuming. I don’t want to do it for each store too.

Another js solution is to change the add to cart button on the product page. Edit, Disable or hide the button when a special product tag is detected.

3

Add metafield ‘seo.hidden=1’ for products that you wanna hide. read the Official document.

You can add metafield in the product edit page in Shopify admin.

You can add metafield by Metafield Admin API.

4

Hey Sushilsth, there are many third-party apps available on the Shopify app store that will help you hide products from the online store and allow only specific customers to access that product. You can install apps like Wholesale Lock Manager and Locksmith. Hope this helps.