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Duplicate Themes

Last updated: October 07 2024

Written and researched by experts at Avada Learn more about our methodology
Sam Nguyen Avatar
By Sam

Making changes directly to your live Shopify theme can be risky, potentially causing issues or even breaking your website’s layout. That’s where theme duplication saves the day.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to easily duplicate a theme on Shopify, so you can customize and experiment with confidence.

Important Considerations Before Duplicating Themes

Before you start duplicating themes, it’s essential to understand a few key points:

  1. When you duplicate a theme, you create an exact copy of the original, including all its settings and customizations.
  2. The duplicated theme is separate from your live theme, allowing you to modify it without impacting your active store.
  3. Shopify allows up to 20 themes (including the live theme and its duplicates) in your Shopify admin.
  4. If you want to duplicate a theme for use in another store, you’ll need to follow manual steps, as direct store-to-store duplication isn’t available.

Step-by-Step Guide to Duplicate a Theme on Shopify

Follow these steps to duplicate a theme within your Shopify store:

Step 1: Navigate to Online Store in the left sidebar.

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Step 2: Click on Theme

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Step 3: Click on the icon … next to the theme you want to duplicate > Duplicate

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Step 4: Wait for the duplication process to complete. Once finished, you’ll see the new duplicate theme in your theme library.

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Managing Duplicated Themes

After duplicating your theme, consider these best practices:

1. Rename the duplicated theme: Click on the “Actions” dropdown for the new theme and select “Rename”. Give it a descriptive name to easily identify its purpose or version.

2. Customize freely: You can now edit and customize the duplicated theme without affecting your live store. Use this opportunity to experiment with new designs, layouts, or features.

3. Preview changes: Use the theme preview function to see how your changes look before making the theme live.

4. Publish when ready: Once you’re satisfied with your changes, you can publish the duplicated theme to make it your live theme.

Bottom Line

Duplicating themes in Shopify offers a safe and flexible way to experiment with your store’s design and functionality. It allows you to make changes, test new ideas, and create variations of your store without risking the appearance or performance of your live site. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can easily create and manage theme duplicates, giving you greater control over your store’s evolution.

FAQs

Yes, you can duplicate any theme in your theme library, including those purchased from the Shopify Theme Store.

No, duplicating a theme within your store doesn't count towards your theme license limit. It only creates a copy within your existing store.

No. There's no direct way to transfer a duplicated theme to another store. You would need to manually recreate the theme or its changes in the other store.

You can duplicate a theme as many times as you like, as long as you stay within Shopify's limit of 20 total themes per store.

No, once a theme is duplicated, it becomes a separate entity. Changes made to the original theme won't affect the duplicate, and vice versa.
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Sam
Sam
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Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.