Today I was faced with a new theme editor that is much slower and harder to read than the original, it also doesn’t give you warnings for unclosed “body” and “html” tags.
If you’re looking for any feedback before making this a permanent change, let me tell you that it is much worse than the old version, despite the version control feature.
Is there anyway to revert to the old version?
Here is what it looks like:
I understand your frustration with the new theme editor. While you generally can’t disable the new UI or revert to a previous version, many developers (myself included) have adopted a local development workflow that is far more powerful and efficient. This method allows you to use your professional code editor and bypass the online editor for almost all tasks.
My preferred workflow utilizes the Shopify CLI, a local code editor such as VS Code, and GitHub for version control.
While it takes a few minutes to set up, this local development workflow will save you a massive amount of time in the long run. You’ll have much more control over your code and a safer development process.
Hope this helps!
Hi,
Hope this will help
-New editor is slow & unreadable: Use VS Code or Notepad++ instead
-Can’t revert to old editor: Shopify doesn’t support it
-Errors not showing: Use browser extensions or external HTML validators
-Want to give feedback: Use the “Give Feedback” button inside editor
-Want full control: Use GitHub + code outside of Shopify
Try using paramter ?vs=0 in the url.
The stores I’m on right now haven’t gotten this silliness enforced by default so I cannot actually test ways to disable this junk.
Thank you for posting the specific problems your having , as other merchants have.
These issues are just the tip of a very very large iceberg of issues and I am adamantly opposed to the arrogance of shopify developers forcing an advanced developers IDE onto ALL merchants by just because developers are used to the complexity.
There’s hundreds of features in vscode merchants will NEVER use but are force to sit and wait for them all to load.
Not even the github platform forces developers to use vscode by default to edit files and that’s a place where developers basically live.
Unfortunately unless enough merchants and partners raise arms the way shopify acts with changes like this is to ignore the problems and act like iT WiLl bE ImPrOvEd oVeR TiMe or other worthless lip speech.
Meanwhile everyday everyone’s having to sit and wait minutes for a fullblown IDE to bootup that’s 3x worse in performance to even to make the simplest of edits.
It only saves time if you need to a major update on the theme.
Most of the time we need to adjust 1 or 2 files in 5 lines at max.
Using Shopify CLI takes a lot of time just to go through their login more potentially several minutes to pull the theme and then push it with the updates.
The new editor is likely here to stay. If you want to edit code you have to be a developer 
I made a video on how to navigate theme files using it: https://youtu.be/M6kA2kGjUgc
Hope it helps.
Using VS code does not make you a developer, if anything it indicates you’re probably a bad developer to think it is a good choice to run this piece of bloated software in the browser.
Dont get me wrong, I was sarcastic when I said ‘you have to be a developer’. This is what Shopify decided it is better for the community. The new editor is for sure much more complicated than it needed to be and developers had their own IDE’s installed on their computers anyway.
The old editor wasn’t the best but it was a bit lighter. Hopefully Shopify will fix the issues this current editor has.
Yes, this is a problem. The old editor was easy for my clients to use - they could easily create a new page or collection template. Now, I have to figure out a way for them to do this using the new editor. They are not developers, and I know a lot of merchants who like to “tinker” with code themselves - this makes it more difficult for them.
It would have been nice to revert back to “classic” version at least, rather than forcing this change on everybody.
The old editor was a best for non-devs, straight up.
I get what you are saying in trying to view WHY shopify’s done this, so I am not ragging on you when I say this I’m just working on the argument itself for when I @ shopify theme team members with all the problems:
I fully refute even the notion of pushing a full blown developers IDE onto merchants for the sake of “community”.
Saying it’s for “community” is like saying everyone should be forced to drive asphalt-trucks because that’s what the road builders think is normal and thus good for a “community”.
On it’s face it’s the type of dev-arrogance move us developers do because “WE” are used to increasing complexity.
So therefore hitherto everyone else must be able to do it to.
Considering maybe everyone else isn’t interested in being a developer , and everyday people with simple needs just need a simple tool is a NON-thought in that mindset.
Other theory’s beyond just narcissism,
At worst it’s some sort of enworsification move for either a kickback deal on VSCode integrations, like a LLM token scheme for theme code generation, or to purposefully alienate merchants because of shopifys shift towards enterprise and needing to pull ladders up.
At middling best hope it’s an a/b test and there’s a toggle button all along waiting to be added.
Not to mention minor things like fixing GTM tags, getting rid of left over app code, removing bad ai generated sections on and on.
This seems like unable to revert, as it is the updated theme editor. But you can choose to leave feedback on Shopify end and see if they shall enable the button of reverting, so that you can choose what you like.
This thing is terrible and clumsy. Please give us the old version back or at minimum the option to choose which version we want to use.
