A user wants to display related products from the same collection (rather than all collections) on product pages in the Debut theme. The built-in ‘Product recommendations’ feature pulls from all collections using sales data and product descriptions, which doesn’t meet this need.
Initial Solutions (2018-2019):
Shopify Support confirmed the default behavior cannot be customized without apps or custom code
Third-party apps like Cross Sell Related Products, Also Bought, and Relatify were recommended
The original poster found an app that filters by collection
Modern Solution (2022+):
A simpler native approach emerged using Shopify’s built-in metafields:
Create a product metafield (Settings → Custom Data → Products) with type “collection”
Assign the relevant collection to each product via this metafield
Add a “Featured collection” section to the product template
Connect it to the metafield as a dynamic source
Multiple users confirmed this method works without requiring apps.
Alternative Code-Based Approach:
Filter recommendations by product type by adding conditional logic to related-products.liquid
Ongoing Questions:
How to randomize displayed products (currently shows same 4 items)
Implementation varies by theme structure
Some users report difficulty finding metafields vs. metaobjects in dynamic sources
Summarized with AI on October 29.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
I was hoping to use the ‘Product recommendations’ feature in Debut. But from what I see it pulls products from ALL the collections and not just the small sub-collection that a product is in. Basically I would like to specify the collection to recommend.
For example: Say I have a tshirt and its part of the global site ‘tshirt’ collection, but then I also have it in a very small 5 product group called ‘bowie’. This bowie collection contains 5 tshirts, all with slight design variations. I would like the customer to be able to see that below the main product there up to 4 additional designs in the collection.
I am hoping to use an existing Section and add in to the product.liquid in a similar way to
{% section ‘product-recommendations’ %} has been used.
If its not possible to do this automatically using collections then can add something into the product.liquid (say Custom content or Featured Collection) and then time I can at least manually add the images, prices and product links.
That is a really great question! The recommendation algorithm uses sales data and product descriptions to show a mix of products that are similar or often bought together. Product recommendations become more accurate over time as new orders and product data become available. You can read more about this in this help doc.
I do, however, totally see where you are coming from. Being able to select more closely related products to show alongside your products. For this kind of control, I would have to recommend going down the lines of related product apps. You can take a look at our product recommendation apps here.
Let me know how this goes and if there is anything else I can assist you with, I’m happy to help!
That is absolutely great to hear, David. If you would like any feedback on your store please feel free to share it with me on this thread, I would be more than happy to take a look at it for you.
Hi, I’m also having this issue and I’d like to to show recomended products from at least the same collection. So there’s no way to do it without installing an app? can’t this be done by adding some code?
This may be achieved by code but that would note a coding change that would be supported by Shopify. You can check out what is covered by your free design time here. If you would like to achieve this via coding, I would recommend hiring a Shopify Expert to do so. Alternatively, Cross Sell Related Products by Cross Sell and Also Bought by Code Black Belt are the highest rated coss selling apps in our app store.
Found this old thread and just wanted to add that this has become super simple in 2022. No apps required.
Create a Metafield on your products of datatype relation->collection.
Go to your theme page and enable a “featured collection” on your product page by using the dynamic value of your product metafield as title and source in the configuration.
So first you go to Settings → Custom Data → Products → Add Definition
Give it a Name (e.g. Brand) and a namespace key (e.c. custom.brand) and select “collection” as the type.
Now you have to edit all your products and assign one of your collections as “brand” to each of your products. (I guess you already have some collections that work as “brand” if not you have to create one collection for each of your brands first).
Ok let’s assume you have done that for all your products.
Go to your theme → customize → select the template of the page you want to add related products to. Most probably “Default product”.
Now add a new Section → “Featured collection” wherever you want the related products (in our example = same brand) to appear.
On the right hand side of the configuration of this new section, select the Metafield collection by clicking the “Pancake Tower” (“Connect dynamic source”) and selecting the “Brand” Metafield. You can also use values of the “Brand” Collection, for example the title of the collection, to insert dynamically as the title of this section.
Let me know if this helps or you need additional information.
Hint: if you need something other than brand, like similar product types or anything else, just add another metafield on step 1 of this tutorial and add it to all of your products. You can even add multiple related “featured collections” - sections each with different types of relations (= assigned collections).
This worked brilliantly! Thank you so much for the step-by-step instructions! I’m so glad there was a in-house solution that didn’t require a 3rd party app. You just made my day!