How to automatically register product categories

Shopify Discussion
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Topic summary

A store owner with over 50,000 beauty products seeks to automate product category assignment in Shopify to reduce manual workload.

Current Challenge:

  • Manually assigning categories to each product is too time-consuming given the large inventory
  • All products are beauty-related items

Desired Solution:

  • Automate category assignment for new products as they’re added
  • Mentioned possibility of using Shopify Flow app combined with metafields
  • Willing to accept a simple solution that assigns all new products to “Personal Care” category if individual categorization isn’t feasible

Status: The user has posted twice requesting detailed setup instructions but has not yet received responses with the technical guidance needed.

Summarized with AI on October 27. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

As you may know, in order to list products in a Shopify store, it is necessary to assign a product category.

However, manually adding categories is quite burdensome, especially because my store has over 50,000 products.

I would like to automatically assign a category to every product as it is added.

I have heard that this might be possible by using the Flow app in combination with metafields, and I would truly appreciate it if you could guide me on how to set this up.

My store exclusively sells beauty-related products.

If it’s not possible to assign different categories automatically for each product,

I am perfectly fine with simply having all new products automatically assigned to the category “Personal Care.”

I would be very grateful for your kind and detailed explanation on how to achieve this automation.

Best Regards,

2

Dear Sir/Madam,

I would greatly appreciate it if you could kindly provide me with detailed instructions on how to set it up.

Your guidance will be very helpful.

Thank you in advance for your support.

Best Regards,

3

I actually just launched a free app today that fixes this specific issue using AI. It scans for missing categories and maps them automatically. You can try the free tier to see if it fixes your error: https://apps.shopify.com/catmap-ai

Mapping product categories is a pain and with our tool you don’t need to do it again and again. You can check our live tool demo at CatMap AI | Google Product Category Finder & Feed Fixer

5

Hi @wealthlly

You can automate the assignment of categories with Shopify Flow and metafields. Make a metafield for “Category” and give the value of “Personal Care.” In Flow, create a workflow on product creation, and update the product metafield with “Personal Care.” Automatically, all new products will be classified.