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Browse practical Shopify app guides, beginning with the newest.
Shopify Stops Accepting New Script Tags on October 1. The Apps Most Likely to Break Are the Ones That Show No Warning
Shopify announced on August 24, 2026 that storefront script tags are deprecated. From October 1, 2026 no app can create or update one, and on March 1, 2027 Shopify stops injecting them into storefronts. Shopify will show merchants a dismissible banner at install time — but the truth table in its own documentation says the banner is suppressed for any app that ships an app embed block, and app embed blocks are off until a merchant turns them on. Asked whether developers could flip that toggle for existing merchants, a Shopify staff member answered on the developer forum: "there's no programmatic way to enable them for existing users." App embeds are also per-theme and per-market, and Shopify's own Help Center warns that changing your published theme deactivates them. This article covers what the two dates change, why the install banner is blind to the most common failure, which apps have no replacement path at all, and how to audit a store from the admin before October 1. Shopify documentation and app vendor help pages verified September 8, 2026.
The $399/Year Schema App Calls Duplicate Product Data a Myth — and Sells a $100 Service to Remove Yours
Shopify ships a one-line Liquid filter, structured_data, that prints Product markup for a product with no variants and ProductGroup for one with variants. Every schema app in the App Store adds a second block on top of it. We pulled one product page from each of ten US Shopify stores on September 15, 2026 and parsed every JSON-LD block: three carried more than one Product-type entity on a single URL, two printed no product markup in the HTML at all and only produced it after JavaScript ran, one printed none at any point, and one printed its star rating in a block with no @type at all, attached to nothing. The two vendors with the clearest public positions disagree completely — Ilana's JSON-LD for SEO ($399/year, 4.9 from 443 reviews) publishes an article titled 'The myth of duplicate structured data' and separately sells a $100 service to remove your theme's, warning it must be repurchased after a theme update, while Webrex: AI SEO, Schema JSON-LD (Built for Shopify, 4.9 from 853 reviews) advertises 'Fix schema errors & duplicates in one click.' Since Admin API 2023-04, public apps cannot write or delete theme files without an exemption Shopify grants case by case. Verified against shopify.dev, Google Search Central, both vendors' own pages, and the Shopify App Store on September 15, 2026.
Shopify Lets Sidekick Use 20 Apps Per Person. Its Own List of Apps That Work With Sidekick Has 18
Sidekick app extensions went generally available on June 17, 2026, and Shopify's merchant-facing guide lists 18 apps that use them. The platform cap is 20 apps per user on a store, so supply is the constraint, not the cap. This article reads the developer documentation for what merchants actually get: app data extensions are read-only, app actions navigate you to a pre-filled page and stage the change — Shopify's own walkthrough ends with "Click Save in the form. The change is committed by your app, not by Sidekick." App actions are also limited to 13 declared intent types, and an unsupported type fails at deploy with no silent fallback. Four of those types — FAQ, quote, ticket, shipment — have no matching app on Shopify's list. Three build requirements explain the short list: existing MCP servers can't be reused, legacy OAuth installs are excluded, and each app gets 5 intents, 20 tools, and a 4,000-token response budget. Two of the guide's own cards show only "Free trial available" for apps that list at $49.99 and $299 a month. And no app listing shows a Sidekick badge at all: Seguno had to put "Sidekick-able" into its 62-character tagline. Ratings, pricing, and the app list verified on the Shopify App Store on September 8, 2026.
Shopify's Product Comparison Category Has 223 Apps and 149 of Them Are Size Charts
We counted every app in the Shopify App Store's Product comparison category: 223 apps, of which 149 are size charts, fit finders, or virtual try-on. Only 46 have compare, spec, versus, or table in the name, and those 46 hold 297 reviews between them — a quarter of what one size chart app has on its own. Then the naming problem: Liquid's `compare_at_price` is a price, Horizon's `comparison-slider` block is a before/after photo wipe, and `taxonomy_category` won't give you the category's attributes. Nine apps compared on six incompatible pricing meters, one 'free plan' that is only free on a development store, and a free tier that puts ads on your product page. Prices verified on the Shopify App Store September 8, 2026.
Shopify's 'Product Comparison' Category Is Mostly Size Charts — and the Real Comparison Apps Meter on Six Different Things
The Shopify App Store has a category called Product comparison with 223 apps in it. On the first page of 24, only four actually compare products — the other twenty are size charts, AI virtual try-on, and one Amazon Buy Button app. Below that surface, the apps that do compare products are two different products sold under one name, and their paid plans meter on six incompatible quantities: nothing at all, feature tier, products per comparison, catalogue size, table views, and table count. One app's `Free to install` plan turns out to read `Free for your development store`. Meanwhile Dawn 16.0.0 contains no comparison feature at all, Horizon 4.1.5 ships a block literally named Comparison slider that compares two images, and Shopify's own Liquid documentation demonstrates the data model these apps are built on using an example field called `similar_products`. All prices and listings verified on the Shopify App Store September 8, 2026.
Shopify can email a customer a link to update a saved card in one click. There is still no button to ask for a card they never saved
The Shopify admin has a Send link to update card action, and the Help Center is precise about where it lives: on a saved card. No saved card, no button. On September 3, 2026 Shopify shipped the mutation that closes that gap — paymentInstrumentSendAddEmail emails a customer a resource-scoped link to add a payment method to a subscription contract, order, or draft order, with no sign-in required. Three things merchants should know before assuming it is available. It ships in API version 2026-10, which is the release candidate, not the latest stable version — the /latest/ reference page returns This API version is not supported. Its resourceId is typed String!, not ID!, so the GID format every other Shopify mutation takes comes back as a not-found userError. And the first-party Shopify Subscriptions reference app, which is open source, implements the older update mutation and does not mention the new one anywhere. Verified against shopify.dev, the Shopify Help Center, the Shopify App Store, and Shopify's own GitHub repository on September 17, 2026.
Dawn Calls Its Block 'collapsible_tab' and It Isn't a Tab — What Product Tabs Apps Actually Sell You
We read both theme repos: Dawn 16.0.0 and Horizon 4.1.5 render `<details>` accordions and neither contains a horizontal tab layout — the string 'tab' does not appear anywhere in Horizon's accordion block files. But Dawn's block settings are `text`, `richtext`, and `page`, all of which accept dynamic sources, so per-product tab content is a metafield away with no app at all. Then four apps compared on four incompatible meters, one $2.99 tier that removes two features its own free plan includes, and the app every 'best product tabs apps 2026' list still recommends that you can no longer install. Prices verified on the Shopify App Store September 8, 2026.
Shopify Is Retiring Shipping Profiles. Starting October 1, Your Shipping App Decides When Your Store Moves
Shipping profiles, location groups, and shipping zones are being replaced by shipping options attached to each market. Shopify's developer docs call it market-driven shipping; the Help Center calls it shipping options by market. Merchant rollout begins October 1, 2026, and every store is on it by July 1, 2027. The headline win is real — rates inside one shipping option stop being added together, and you're charged the highest matching rate instead. But three things change without asking you: split shipping is forced on, your product groups become unpublished `[Shipping]` collections, and the Markets permission your staff need isn't included in any existing staff role. Shopify also states that stores relying on incompatible shipping apps are upgraded later, so your rate app's upgrade schedule is now your upgrade schedule. All figures verified September 8, 2026.