How do I find out wehre a class is defined?

Store Design

Topic summary

A user working with Shopify’s Dawn theme is trying to locate where the CSS class copyright__content is defined. The class appears in footer.liquid but its styling rules aren’t found in the expected base.css file.

Key developments:

  • Initial searches in base.css, theme.css, and styles.css yielded no results
  • Another user offered collaborative access to investigate directly
  • Resolution: The class was found defined in section-footer.css

Technical insight provided:

  • Modern Shopify themes don’t use a single stylesheet
  • CSS rules are distributed across multiple smaller .css files that load as needed
  • Browser “Inspect element” tools can quickly identify where specific CSS rules are defined (screenshot provided)

The issue was resolved through direct collaboration, revealing that Dawn theme organizes styles by section rather than in one central file.

Summarized with AI on October 29. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hello! In my footer.liquid the class “copyright__content” is used. I would like to change the style of this class (e.g. change font color or size). However, in the footer.liquid this class is not defined. Thus, it must be defined in another code sheet. Where do I find the definition of this specific class and how do I generally find the definition of the classes (or are they all defined in one single code sheet that I have not find yet)?

Thanks!

2

@Frede - if you are looking for a css then please check,

Shopify Admin → Online Store ->Theme → Edit code → base.css/theme.css/styles.css

3

Thanks for the superfast reply! However, in the file base.css the class copyright__content is not defined (a search for “copyright__content” resulted in 0 hits) and the other two css-files (theme.css and styles.css) are not existing. But the copyright__content must be defined somewhere! How can I find the definition of this class?

Btw, I’m unsing Dawn Theme…

Thanks!

4

@Frede did you check footer.liquid file?

5

Yes, in the footer.liquid file the class copyright__content is used but it do not contain the definition of this class.

6

@Frede - it is just a css class, what do you mean by definition?

7

This is for example the definition of the CSS class “text-body” and comes from the base.css-file:

.text-body {
font-size: 1.5rem;
letter-spacing: 0.06rem;
line-height: calc(1 + 0.8 / var(–font-body-scale));
font-family: var(–font-body-family);
font-style: var(–font-body-style);
font-weight: var(–font-body-weight);
}

I’m looking for the place where the class copyright__content is defined.

8

@Frede can you accept me as collab? I can check it into your theme

9

Sure, my guest code is 9040

10

@Frede website link?

11
12

@Frede sent the request

13

Thank you! I have confirmed your request.

14

@Frede please check your DM

15

Thank you sooo much!!!

It’s defined in the section-footer.css

1 Like
16

@Frede - do let me know if you have any more updates

17

Screenshot 2025-04-22 at 2.11.40 PM.png
Screenshot 2025-04-22 at 2.11.40 PM.png719×387 55.6 KB

In modern theme there is usually no single stylesheet, CSS rules are stored in several smaller .css files to be loaded as needed.

You can easily see where rules related to particular element are by using “Inspect element” in your browser, like in the screenshot above.

1 Like