Theme preview not displayed

Technical Q&A
1

Hello The community ,
I’m facing some problem previewing my theme modification . I’ve tried with several web browser and even changed the theme and the preview always display the activated theme .

can anyone help ?

thanks

2 Likes
4

@ahdbk I’m also having this issue for a store that I’m currently working on. I can preview some themes, but the duplicated themes of the live theme. Even adding the theme id to the URL doesn’t work. It still resolves on the live theme. I’ve cleared the cache and did everything I could, but I’m still unable to preview the theme.

5

In Shopify, the Theme Preview link will always load the currently published (active) theme unless the preview URL is generated correctly.

If you’re editing an unpublished theme but the preview keeps showing the live one, it usually means one of these is happening

6

I have discovered 2 things:

  • There was an error with 1 of the files. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the issue I was having, but I had the error fixed.

  • After doing that, I previewed another theme; the theme looked different, but the bar at the bottom of the page that tells you that you are previewing a theme, wasn’t showing. I went back to the draft theme I wanted to preview, and I saw edits that I made to the theme displaying, but nothing in the URL nor the bar at the bottom of the page was there to tell me that I was previewing the theme. Themes that were last updated a year ago would preview with the bar showing, so I have no clue what’s the reason for that.

Either way, it seems I’m previewing the theme. Just wished there was consistency, and that the bar would at least show, to give me comfort in knowing that I’m viewing the draft theme.

1 Like
8

Not working it seem that something is browken in my shop and don’t know how to troubleshoot. I’ve tried to use the same theme in a new shop and it is working . My shop is not lanched yet so I can recreate it from scratch but I can’t do it whan my shop is live . This is a very annoying problem

9

Not working ive tried it , it reload the published theme :confused: . I didn’t use the oreview very often so i don’t know which modification broke the website

10

@Dwalker-BTA you are saying manage to find the file with error . How did you do the troubleshooting ? I think i have the same problem but don’t kno from where to start :confused:

11

@ahdbk In the theme’s customize view, there was a message in the top left corner of the screen. It mentioned the file’s name and that there was an error. When I went to the file, I had to read through it to find the error, which was a missing closed . I added it and previewed the theme again. Mind you, the usual indications that a theme is being previewed didn’t show (i.e. the preview id in the URL and the banner with the theme’s name at the bottom of the screen). However, before fixing the file, none of the changes I added to the draft theme was taking effect when I “previewed” it. After the fix, I could tell that I was viewing the theme based on stylings and elements that are only in the theme.