Users are struggling with Shopify’s “views” feature on the Collections page, which doesn’t function as intuitively expected. The original poster assumed views would allow manual grouping of collections into custom categories, but discovered they only work by filtering existing collection attributes (sales channels, type, keywords).
Core Problem:
Views cannot be manually populated by selecting specific collections
They only display filtered results based on collection properties
When all collections share identical settings (same sales channels, all automated), no meaningful differentiation is possible
Attempted Workarounds:
Adding keyword designators to collection titles enables filtering, but requires modifying customer-facing names
This approach breaks when designators are removed
Community Consensus:
Multiple users confirm the feature is “essentially useless” for organizing collections into logical groups
Requested improvements include: manual collection selection for views, tagging system similar to products, and persistent sort preferences
Status: No viable solution exists. The discussion remains unresolved, with users expressing frustration over the feature’s limited functionality and lack of documentation explaining its actual purpose versus expected behavior.
Summarized with AI on October 30.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
Hey everyone, I’ve been working with Shopify for several years, but I never bothered to experiment with the option to create new “views” on the Collections page which seemed pretty simple. My assumption was that I could select certain collections and then select “Create a View” so that I would be able to essentially organize my collections into categories aka “views”. But in testing nothing I’ve done seems to change what collections appear when creating a new view and I haven’t found anything discussing this, so I’m either an idiot or fundamentally misunderstand what “views” are? If so, what do they do and how do you use them??
Welcome to Shopify Community and thank you for sharing your question with our network.
I’d be happy to help offer any guidance with your question. I played around in my test store and even looked online, though I was unable to properly understand what you meant by “creating views” within collections.
I assume then, instead of this being a feature in your Admin this is a feature in your theme? Can you please provide the following context so I can better help out:
What theme are you using and where do you see this option
Any screenshot examples you can provide of how you are creating these views would also be helpful
Just in case this is an option within an app, that context would also be helpful
I assume this isn’t a default feature, but I can definitely help you find the answers you are looking for.
Hi Olivia, thanks for the reply. I could be wrong, but I don’t believe it’s a function of the theme specifically, it’s just in the side bar of the main store page as shown below:
What supposed to happen when you click the + sign? Because for me, a new “view” is created which I can rename, but there’s no way to modify which collection(s) show up under it. It just continues to show all of my collections regardless of which view I click on and what I try to change. Does that make sense?
Ah, thank you so much for that additional context.
Yes, this makes perfect sense and I’d be glad to shed some light on this little organization feature in our Admin. There are two ways to play with views, which I will break down for you.
The first, is to create a view as you are doing which will essentially duplicate the original view for you to play around with collections, or search through. Let’s say I have a view called test, once I select it from my list of views I can search through it or filter by collection type and sales channels.
Okay, that makes total sense and does work the way I had assumed. I guess the issue for me becomes that there is no differentiation between “Sales Channel” and “Type” for all of my collections because I want them all on every sales channel and I want them all to be automated. So it doesn’t seem that there is any way to filter out specific collections from any given view when they all have the same settings. Is that right?
I think a handy feature would be to be able create views manually by checking the selection boxes next to the collections you want to filter and then having an option to “Add to view” or “Remove from view”. I created a quick mockup for reference:
If you’re looking for collections that meet certain criteria you could also use the search bar for keywords they have in common? The products tab also has much more customizable filter and view options that is easy to sort through, where you can also sort by collection so I wonder if that’s a better fit for your needs.
Yea I was just experimenting with the key words idea, but that would require adding an additional characters to all of the collection titles which is less than ideal. I tried adding a “01” in the title of several collections and was able to create a view based on that key word search, but the moment I erased the text from the titles they would be removed from that view.
And for my purposes it’s more about being able to view/edit the conditions of a certain subset of collections rather than products within one particular collection, if that makes any sense. But thank you for the recommendation!
I’ll keep toying with it and update this post if I find any viable work arounds.
Hi, there doesn’t seem to be a viable workaround no.
You can add a word or letter designator to each collection and then group them by searching for that designator, but if you plan for the collection titles to be displayed to the customer then that’s also pretty useless. There could be ways to work around that added problem but then it’s just band-aid on top of band-aid.
I agree - this feature doesn’t do the basics - all I want is to create a “view” where my recently added products are at the top of the page so if I’m working for a few days on new product listing I don’t have to go to filter - select “created” then select “newest first” every single time. It’s just super super annoying to have to go through those steps every time. And as a feature it’s not intuitive at all…it doesn’t do what is it seems it would and there’s no explainer accompanying it.
A bit late to the party, but I want to piggyback on this as I am having the same issue.
Filtering by “Sales Channel” and “Type” isn’t an option since all of my collections have the same settings. Collection views would be far more useful if we could manually add or remove collections to a view.
Hi, Olivia. I found this thread when also trying to use Collection views on my Shopify site, and agree the current functionality is pretty useless. What I suggest is needed to make it really useful is the ability to add tags to collections like you can for products, and then filter by tags to obtain a view. That would make it much easier to work with large numbers of collections. Perhaps you could pass that suggestion back?
Just found this thread after trying to sort our collections for the past hour. ( We have over 50 collections )
Has anyone found a solution to this yet?
