Local development not synching template

Retired Boards Appdev Tools

Topic summary

A developer encountered an issue where changes made to a custom Shopify template through the online editor were not syncing to their local development environment.

Problem Details:

  • Modified template using the Shopify CLI-provided editor URL
  • Added sections through the editor and clicked “save”
  • Local template files did not update despite running shopify theme dev
  • Attempted troubleshooting steps included clearing cache and using incognito mode

Resolution:

  • The issue was resolved by pulling the theme after making changes in the editor
  • Once the pull step was completed, the new code appeared in the local environment

Key Takeaway:
Changes made in the online editor require an explicit pull command to sync with local files - they don’t automatically update when running the dev server.

Summarized with AI on November 9. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi,

I am having issues when trying to work on a custom template locally.

Basically I created the template and started to modify it using the url given to me by the CLI

https://<my-store>.myshopify.com/admin/themes/137673244841/editor

I made changes to the template using the editor (added some sections) and I was expecting my local template file to be updated when I clicked on “save” using the url above but my template is not being saved and the changes are not there any more when I run shopify theme dev again.

I am new to shopify so I may be doing something wrong.

Any suggestion about what can be happening?

I already tried clearing my cache, logging in from incognito, etc but nothing worked so far.

Thanks in advance,

2

Found what the problem was.
I was missing one step: pulling the theme being developed after making changes on the editor.
Once I did that, the new code started to show up.

Thanks.