Personally I didn’t have this issue until 2 days ago.
But now the cache time just seems to be forever!
Only affects assets files. .liquid files under templates works fine.
Topic summary
Developers are experiencing severe caching issues with Shopify themes, particularly affecting .js.liquid and .css.liquid files. Changes uploaded via ThemeKit or made directly in the theme editor aren’t reflecting in previews for 1.5-10 minutes, despite clearing browser caches.
Confirmed Issue:
- Shopify acknowledged this as a known problem affecting preprocessed files
- Issue has persisted for months with no clear resolution timeline
- One user reported it being “fixed” but others continue experiencing problems
Current Workarounds:
- Rename files then revert to original names to force cache refresh
- Rapidly refresh pages multiple times
- Close and reopen theme preview
- Push code as entirely new themes
- Use incognito/private browsing windows
- Clear browser cookies specifically
Impact:
- Development time nearly doubled for some users
- Particularly severe with bundled JavaScript files
- Affects both development stores and production sites
- Makes rapid prototyping nearly impossible
Developer Frustration:
Many express that Shopify’s developer experience for theme development remains poor, with some suggesting moving to custom storefronts (Hydrogen) or treating theme development like compiled code rather than expecting real-time updates. The issue also affects end customers who may not see updated sites due to prolonged cookie expiration.
3 Likes
yes, it has to do with any resource/liquid file in the edit code section…
this is ridiculous.
how does a developer or designer rapidly prototype within Shopify? where is the developer sandbox or playground to try code snippets or design out before deploying to production? Making a one byte change and saving sometimes caches for 10-15 minutes or longer. Sometimes making multiple changes thinking the change didn’t deploy and then one of the version becomes Live but you don’t know which one and now you’re debugging even more!
I totally understand the purpose of caching in a PRODUCTION environment having worked on ecommerce platforms and creating many sites on top of other platforms. Usually you export to at least a Test site or sandbox where the is little to no traffic and NO caching, sometimes testing on a UAT (universal acceptance test) site, and then deploy Live to production.
I worked with Shopify chat support for half a day yesterday. It took a long time for them to understand this issue. They told me to put “nocache” at the end of the URL to solve the issue but no luck and turns out that is not an option. After they discussed many times with other support people it turns out this is how Shopify is…ugh. My dev time is tripled or more. how does a developer function on Shopify?
I tried taking the view source and making a static file so I could make changes locally but then Shopify is blocking many of the Include requests so we can’t even try that option.
I think Shopify is mainly for drag and drop config driven web designers who don’t code much, has to be. No way someone who regularly codes can suffer through this. I hope I am wrong. How does a developer quickly make changes to prototype a new feature on Shopify?
2 Likes
It seems to have gotten worse, I made a change to my css this morning and 8 hours later, it still doesn’t show up. The css file definitely updated since I see the change I made within shopify’s admin. Man this is frustrating.
Hopefully this means they are working on it, but I’m surprised about how little attention this getting to be honest.
This is now a known issue affecting all of the .js.liquid and .css.liquid pre-processed files (at a minimum).
Shopify is working on a fix.
Where can we see the status of the fix? It seems to be a week in now and still affecting our dev themes. It’s almost impossible to get any work done in this state.
They said there was no place to track the fix or to get an update. They only gave me the link to this thread. Its really frustrating and is affecting all Shopify Plus sites.
1 Like
@BIABAJay As a workaround, if you rename your file to something else then revert back to the original, it seems to load the latest saved one. I was having an issue with theme.js not updating on CDN, and when I renamed it to theme2.js then change it back it loaded the latest changes.
Seems to have been fixed for me. Anyone else?
Nope. Still occurs… Save, go get another cup of coffee, hope cache clears after a few minutes… repeat
Am I missing something? How does a developer or a graphic designer rapidly prototype and try out changes on Shopify? Or Shopify doesn’t support a sandbox or test site to try out changes before Deploying/Saving to Production?
2 Likes
It’s been fixed for me since I contacted support and put in a ticket over a week ago. Weird, I thought the fix would be universal for everyone.
I/we would love to know what the fix is! What was the fix?
Support told me to Duplicate the site we are working with and Save to this site. However, since it uses the exact same URL (uses a cookie to know it is on a copy of the Theme) I believe it is also considered a Production site that also has the same caching issues. The cached resources is still an issue for the main Theme’s production site as well as the Duplicated sites…
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It’s been working fine for me, all I can say is to make sure that you’re running the latest version of theme kit. For me, I wasn’t able to update theme kit until I updated ruby on my Mac. Not sure if this is helpful but it’s worth a shot.
I am not sure what a theme builder (theme kit) and UI resources (CSS, JavaScript, HTML) has anything to do with server side caching.
This issue has to do with Shopify’s practices of caching resources on the server side. For Production, great! For Development, Testing, Designing, and prototyping…not so much…
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If working directly in a theme by slowing down and charging more money, or move to custom storefronts using hydrogen or other frameworks. Otherwise figure out a way to work outside of the theme environ using just pure html,css,and js then migrate that back to a liquid theme.
The dx(developer experience) for the online-sales channel has always been grit filled garbage do not expect that to change anytime soon.
Sometimes you have to in a perverse way treat web-dev on shopify themes like your compiling C code.
Since there will be a delay between what you code and being able to test the actual results, try think through and implement as much as possible that’s needed before uploading; instead of iterating a few lines or logic blocks with a 10 minute long REPL.
Note that duplicating a store to a dev store is a shopify Plus only feature.
If instead by “duplicating a store” they meant duplicating a theme that tends to solve very little if cache is being troublesome.
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Just adding on more so they do something about this. I have been dealing with this problem for months. I don’t have issues with it picking up new liquid or css files – I do however with JS files and constantly have to delete then resave the file I’m working on from the assets folder to get it to turn over. It’s especially bad with xx[.bundle].js files
It has nearly doubled my dev time.
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Also having this issue with .js files. They are being uploaded to the theme, but are not updated in the preview.
This is a fundamental part of your product, how do you miss this?
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Thanks for that @PaulNewton . Is this issue a non-issue with a Plus license? I doubt it.
I am still having this cumbersome issue that is doubling my dev time since we have to wait for the files to refresh from the server-side…
I have found some success with Saving…waiting a few seconds… making a small change like a new line… Saving again… waiting a few seconds… and then refreshing… and sometimes that works. What a dev process!
Any update or explanation Shopify?
Same with theme app extensions