Yep, that’s normal behavior in a lot of Shopify themes, desktop gets a grid, mobile gets a slider for “better UX”. Since you’ld liike mobile to behave like desktop, you have two realistic routes, theme setting if it exists, or a small code tweak.
Option 1, try to fix it in the theme editor first
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Shopify admin, Online Store, Themes, Customize
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Open a product page preview
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Click the section that controls the gallery, usually called Main product, Product information, Product media, or Product gallery
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Look for settings like these and change them
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Media layout, Gallery layout, set to Grid
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Mobile layout, set to Grid
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Enable swipe, Enable slider, Thumbnail slider, turn it off
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Thumbnails, set to Show all, not Scroll
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Save, then check on mobile
If you do not see any of those toggles, your Ella version is hard coded to use a carousel on smaller breakpoints, so you need option 2.
Option 2, force a grid on mobile with CSS
This is the fastest “tell it like it is” fix. It makes the media container wrap into a grid on small screens.
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Online Store, Themes, Edit code
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Find your main CSS file, often one of these
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base.css
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theme.css
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styles.css
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Paste this at the bottom
@media (max-width: 749px){
.productView-images,
.product__media-list,
.product-media,
.product-gallery{
display:flex !important;
flex-wrap:wrap !important;
gap:10px !important;
}
.productView-images .productView-image,
.product__media-list .product__media-item,
.product-gallery .item,
.product-media .item{
width:calc(50% - 5px) !important;
max-width:calc(50% - 5px) !important;
flex:0 0 calc(50% - 5px) !important;
}
}
What this does, it turns the mobile gallery into a 2 column grid. If you like 1 column instead, change the 50% to 100%.
If the carousel still “wins” and ignores the CSS, it means a slider script is injecting inline styles. Then you do option 3.
Option 3, disable the mobile slider script
Ella often uses a slider library that initializes under a breakpoint. You need to stop that init for product media.
Quick way to find it
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Edit code
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Search for one of these keywords
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slick
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swiper
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carousel
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productViewImages
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product media slider
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You will likely find code that checks window width and then runs the slider on mobile
Once you find it, you either remove the mobile init, or add a setting flag check so it never runs.
When you’re ready, tell me which exact Ella version you are on, and paste the code from your product media section file, usually something like sections main product liquid or snippets product media, plus the slider init block you find. I’ll point to the exact lines to change so it stays clean and survives updates as much as possible.