Why doesn't Shopify host apps outside the stores to prevent slowing of sites?

Shopify Apps
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Topic summary

A merchant raises concerns about Shopify’s reliance on third-party apps to fill feature gaps, which causes significant performance degradation—specifically poor LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) and INP (Interaction to Next Paint) scores. They question why Shopify doesn’t host app extensions separately from the store itself to prevent these slowdowns, arguing that merchants unfairly bear the optimization burden.

Proposed Solutions:

  • Use requestIdleCallback to defer non-essential app scripts and prioritize page rendering
  • Apply font-display: swap to prevent app fonts from blocking rendering
  • Manually audit and remove unused app scripts from theme files (theme.liquid)
  • Test performance improvements using Google PageSpeed Insights

A developer suggests their Website Speedy app as an automated solution for lazy loading images and deferring heavy scripts. The discussion remains open with no official Shopify response addressing the architectural concern about app hosting.

Summarized with AI on October 27. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Shopify lacks a lot of basic features, forcing shop owners to rely on third-party apps. But as soon as you rely on critical apps necessary for vital features, the LCP and INP values for loading the site suddenly plunges and becomes poor. How does this make any sense?

Why doesn’t Shopify structure the app extensions to load from another storage/memory than the actual Shop, to stop this from happening? The burden of dealing with these constant and endless problems with Shopify is put solely on the shop owner which is both unjustified and unfair.

[I tried to upload a photo to show how badly the page loading performs after apps are added, but of course I couldn’t do that either because the ‘ad image’ feature of the community on a laptop is structured wrong and layers prevent you from accessing the ‘done’ button to ad the image… It’s always something with this platform, endless problems.]

2

Hello @shopfy-2020 , Absolutely understand your frustration, you’re not alone. I’ve seen many merchants run into this exact issue — Depending on third-party apps for essential features to experience a decline in performance metrics like LCP and INP but this isn’t ideal, and yes, the burden of optimization ends up on the merchant, which can feel unfair — especially when you’re trying to just run a business.

Here are some advanced techniques you can try to resolve the issue:

1. Use requestIdleCallback for Non-Essential App Initializations

  • Instead of loading all app logic as soon as the page loads, defer non-essential scripts using requestIdleCallback. This lets the browser prioritize rendering and user interaction first.

if (‘requestIdleCallback’ in window) {

requestIdleCallback(() => {

loadThirdPartyApp(); // init chat widgets, upsells, etc.

});

} else {

setTimeout(loadThirdPartyApp, 2000);

}

  1. Use font-display: swap for App Fonts

Fonts from apps can block rendering.Ensure fonts are loaded with font-display: swap.

@font-face {

font-family: ‘CustomAppFont’;

src: url(‘{{ ‘custom-font.woff2’ | asset_url }}’) format(‘woff2’);

font-display: swap;

}

3.Remove Unused Apps and Scripts

  • Disabled or inactive apps still load scripts.
  • Use Shopify Admin > Online Store > Themes > Edit Code, and search in theme.liquid or other themes for app scripts and remove unused ones.

Once you applied these solutions, you can test your website using Google Page Insights

Alternatively, if you’re overwhelmed with optimization tasks and want to streamline performance, I’d recommend trying the Shopify Website Speedy app. It automates many Web Vitals improvements like Lazy loading images and deferring heavy third-party scripts.

(Disclaimer: We are the developers of this app and are happy to assist with any questions you may have!)