Main topic: How unpublished themes interact with the live Shopify site and third‑party apps.
Adding a new theme places it in the theme library; only the single published theme is live to customers. Edits affect only the specific theme you’re editing; unpublished themes do not impact the published theme.
App Embeds: In the theme editor’s left sidebar, the “App embeds” section lets you enable/disable each app per theme. This means apps can be active in some themes and off in others.
Theme switching: When you publish a different theme, you may need to re‑enable the app embeds in that new theme. Some apps require manual code installation; you must add that code to each theme you use.
Reverting: You can republish a previous theme at any time; code changes and app settings are theme‑specific, so switching back does not alter other themes.
Testing: You can configure app embeds within an unpublished theme. The post does not confirm whether all third‑party app integrations function fully before publishing.
Visual aids: Screenshots illustrate the theme library and App embeds UI.
Open question: Whether enabling the same app on two themes results in being charged twice remains unanswered.
Summarized with AI on December 26.
AI used: gpt-5.
Hello, I need a little help understanding themes and the connection to apps.
If I install a new theme to work on, but don’t publish it, does it affect the live site at all? Does anything happen to the 3rd party app connections for the live site? Can I test the connection with my 3rd party apps before publishing?
When you install a new theme are the 3rd party apps already connected with that new theme and copy of your site? When you publish the new theme, do the 3rd party app connections continue and work if I change themes? If they aren’t connected or don’t work, can you roll back your site and have the previous version work with the 3rd party apps without any issues or coding?
Great questions. When you add a new theme to your store it goes into your theme library, which you can find just under your published theme. You will have one published theme that people can see when they visit your website, and customers will not be able to see your additional themes in your library. When you make edits to your theme in the store editor, you are only editing that one specific theme. Having those additional themes doesn’t affect your current published theme, and your unpublished ones don’t affect your published theme.
When you add apps to your theme, most of them you’ll be able to connect to your store editor and you can enable them into your site. When you open your editor, on the left side of the screen it will display the different sections you can make edits in. The bottom one is App Embeds, it will look like this:
You will find any app embeds in that section and you can toggle the enable button to have it show in the current theme you’re editing.
This means you can have certain apps enabled in some of your themes, and disabled in others. If you were to change the theme you have published, you can simply toggle the enable button in your store editor and you’re done. There are some apps that require you to manually install coding yourself, for those ones you would just have to manually install the coding into the new theme you want to use.
Having multiple themes will not affect your published theme, and even when you make coding changes, you are only editing one theme code at a time. If you switch your published theme and change your mind for any reason, you can just change your published theme again.
I hope that answers those questions for you, but let me know if you have more.
Hi Kitana, thank you for your reply! It’s really helpful. I have another question, if I use the app on the first theme, and then I republish another theme and enable the app on both themes, will the app charge me twice?
