how to show only selected variant images dawn (and correct color pictures in the thumbnail carousel)

Store Design
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Topic summary

A user seeks to display only images matching the selected product variant (e.g., showing only black sweatshirt images when black is chosen) in the Dawn theme’s thumbnail carousel. A YouTube tutorial worked on mobile but failed on desktop, splitting images incorrectly and only functioning with the “stacked” layout option.

Proposed Solutions:

  • Multiple users shared YouTube tutorial links with code modifications
  • One approach uses variant metafields to store image filenames, then applies custom Liquid and JavaScript code to filter images
  • Another method involves editing the product template code to conditionally display images based on selected variant ID
  • A paid code solution was offered by a service provider

Key Concerns:

  • Most solutions require editing image alt text or manually adding filenames, which becomes impractical for stores with thousands of products
  • One user reported mobile swipe issues where other variant images still appear
  • The Rubik Variant Images app was recommended by multiple users as a no-code alternative

Current Status:
The discussion remains open with no confirmed working solution. The final commenter expressed frustration that the Rubik app demo didn’t work and requested an official Shopify solution.

Summarized with AI on October 29. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
12

Hi @BrucesWaynee

I hope you are doing well!

We can achieve showing the images of selected variant using the variants metafields as well. Here are the steps to do so -

  1. Create variant metafields to store name of images
  2. Add image names as values in product variant metafield
  3. Apply a custom code in liquid to identify the images of variants
  4. Add JS code to show only selected variant images.

Here is a demo video to show above steps for the Dawn theme 12.0.0 : https://youtu.be/E3TKR5bb-B4

Please let me know if more details are needed.

Thanks & Regards,

Scale-up print