Why are some products not appearing on Point of Sale?

Topic summary

Core Issue:
Products configured for Point of Sale (POS) are not appearing in the POS app, despite being visible in Shopify admin and having correct channel/location settings enabled. This affects both existing products that previously sold through POS and newly added items.

Reported Patterns:

  • Problem occurs intermittently across multiple users since at least 2020
  • Products often appear on iPhone POS but not iPad POS
  • Issue persists through 2025 with no permanent fix
  • Particularly problematic during customer transactions, causing lost sales and inventory tracking errors

Attempted Workarounds:

  • Logging out/in: Temporarily resolves missing products but impractical for daily operations
  • Reinstalling app: Provides temporary fix but problem recurs with new products
  • Account reset: Reset POS account from iPad settings (Settings > Shopify POS > Reset Account)
  • Data synchronization: Manually sync via POS settings > Connectivity > Data Synchronization
  • Channel verification: Ensure POS channel is checked in product settings (not just inventory location)
  • Product duplication: Some users duplicated problematic products to make them appear

Current Status:
No permanent solution exists. Users continue experiencing this issue intermittently, requiring repeated manual interventions that disrupt business operations and embarrass staff during customer interactions.

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

I got the same issue. I just setup recently, cannot find any listed products. It has been 2023!! Can anyone fix this?