variantOption - Unexpected behavior when using filters in collections

Product Development & Sourcing
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Topic summary

Users are experiencing issues filtering product variants in Shopify collections using the variantOption filter in the Storefront API. Despite following official documentation and applying filters like Color: Black, the API returns all product variants instead of only the filtered ones.

Attempted Solutions:

  • Installing the “Search & Discovery App” from Shopify admin
  • Configuring filters (Color, Size, Warehouse) in the app settings
  • Following steps from a GitHub discussion about enabling product types in “Collection and search filters”

Current Status:
The issue remains unresolved. Users report that even after implementing suggested fixes, queries still return complete variant lists rather than filtered results. The discussion is seeking clarification on whether:

  • There’s a built-in Storefront API method to return only matching variants
  • Client-side filtering after fetching is the only viable approach
  • Additional configuration steps are missing

No definitive solution has been identified yet.

Summarized with AI on October 24. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hey all, I’m trying to filter the products variants of my collections using the filters and variantOption properties. I have been following this guide from the official doc https://shopify.dev/docs/custom-storefronts/building-with-the-storefront-api/products-collections/filter-products#query-products-by-variant-options and this is the query I’m testing to fetch my data

query getCollection($idCollection: ID) {
  collection(id: $idCollection) {
    id
    title
    products(
      first: 10
      filters: { variantOption: { name: "Color", value: "Black" } }
    ) {
      edges {
        node {
          id
          title
          description
          totalInventory
          variants(first: 5) {
            edges {
              node {
                id
                title
                price {
                  amount
                }
                compareAtPrice {
                  amount
                }
                selectedOptions {
                  name
                  value
                }
              }
            }
          }
          featuredImage {
            url
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

However, in my response, I get all the product variants and not just the one that I’m filtering with the variant options. I just want to know if there is something missing in my query or if there is some other way to achieve this.

1 Like
2

I found a similar issue here: https://github.com/Shopify/storefront-api-feedback/discussions/120

Looks like it was solved by these steps:

Did you enable the product type in the "Collection and search filters" section in the Shopify admin?

That was it. Steps to solve.
Open Store Admin -> Sales Channels -> Online Store -> Navigation
Add "Search & Discovery App" by Shopify
Now you can edit "Collection and search filters" in the app settings.

Let me know if this helped, if not I will try and recreate this.

3

Just add the “Search & Discovery App” in my Shopify admin but there is not a “Collection and search filters” option, there is just a filters option and I added the Color and Warehouse options in there but when testing the query it still returning all variants.

1 Like
4

I already tried the suggested solution (installed the Search & Discovery App and added the filters like Color and Size) but I’m still getting all the product variants in the response, not just the filtered one.

So what I really need is a way to only get the matching variant(s) back in the response rather than all of them. Do you know if there’s a built-in way to do that in Storefront API, or do I need to filter the variants manually on the client side after fetching?