Shopify B2B - Prevent new products from being added automatically to a catalog

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A user encountered an issue when creating B2B catalogs via Shopify’s GraphQL API. Unlike the admin interface, which offers a checkbox to control whether new products are automatically included, the API appeared to lack this option.

Problem:

  • The catalogCreate mutation seemed to default to automatically adding all new products to catalogs
  • This was undesirable for limiting product visibility to specific B2B customers

Resolution:

  • The setting is controlled through the publicationCreate mutation, not catalogCreate
  • The auto-include behavior is tied to catalog publication rather than the catalog object itself

The issue was resolved once the correct API mutation was identified.

Summarized with AI on October 28. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

When creating a new Catalog in the admin, I see there is a checkbox that says “Automatically include new products in this catalog.” However, when creating a new catalog via the GraphQL API (catalogCreate), there does not appear to be any way to specify that behavior.

From what I’ve seen, it looks like when you create a new catalog via the API, Shopify assumes that you want all new products to be added to the catalog. For my particular use case, I don’t want that - I just want the catalog to contain the items that I add to it (to limit the products a specific B2B customer can purchase).

Am I missing something, or Is there any way to accomplish that via the API?

2 Likes
2

Did you ever get a solution?

3

Yes, it turns out that the setting to automatically add products to the catalog is part of the catalog publication, not the catalog itself, so that is set via the publicationCreate mutation, not the catalogCreate mutation.

4

Thanks, we found this out too.