Draft products & filtering

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Draft product support

Merchandising rules support draft products, so you can curate collection pages before a product is published. Draft products that belong to a collection appear alongside active products in the merchandising UI and can be pinned, swapped, and reordered like any other product.

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How draft products work in merchandising

When you open a merchandising rule for a collection, the product grid automatically includes any draft products that Shopify has assigned to that collection. Draft products are visually marked with an orange Draft badge so you can distinguish them from published products at a glance. You can:

• Pin draft products to specific positions in the collection
• Swap a draft product into a slot using the swap popover. Draft products appear in search results alongside published products
• Reorder draft products by dragging them to a new position

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Pin protection for draft products

Pins on draft products are protected from automatic cleanup. Layers’ background processes that remove pins for unsearchable or sold-out products skip draft products entirely. Your merchandising layout stays intact while a product is in draft, and the pins take effect as soon as the product is published.

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Scheduled and unpublished products

Active products with a Shopify publication scheduled for a future date also appear in the merchandising grid so you can pin and arrange them ahead of launch. Their cards show a Scheduled badge instead of Unpublished. The badge reflects the upcoming publication; it does not take a product offline on a channel where it is already live. Until the scheduled publication goes live, the product remains unavailable to shoppers on that channel. A publication already live on another channel, such as an app channel, stays available there. You can:

• Pin unpublished products to specific positions before their scheduled publish time
• Swap in unpublished products using the swap popover
• Reorder unpublished products alongside published items in the grid

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Previewing desktop and mobile layouts

The merchandising grid toolbar includes a desktop / mobile toggle. Switching it re-flows the grid to that device’s column count and shows that device’s banner layout, so you can check how your arrangement lands on each breakpoint without leaving the editor. Banner placements are edited per device. The first time you place a banner on one device, Layers mirrors that placement to the other device automatically. After both devices have a placement, changes you make while viewing mobile only affect the mobile layout, and vice versa.

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Disabling variant breakouts

Merchandising rules include an option to disable variant breakouts for a collection when the rule is active. The option overrides the default variant breakout behavior configured for a collection. You’ll find the Disable Variant Breakouts toggle in the Settings tab of the rule editor’s sidebar. When you turn it on for a merchandising rule:

• Variant breakouts will not be applied to the collection while this rule is active
• Products will display as standard product tiles instead of individual variant tiles
• This override only applies when this specific rule is the active rule for the collection

Use the Disable Variant Breakouts option to temporarily disable variant breakouts for specific merchandising campaigns or contexts without modifying your global variant breakout configuration. Use cases:

• Promotional campaigns where you want to show products as single tiles for cleaner presentation
• Contextual merchandising where certain audiences should see products instead of variants
• Scheduled events where variant breakouts should be disabled during specific time windows

See Variant Breakouts for more information on how variant breakouts work and how merchandising rules can override them.

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Product filtering

The merchandising interface includes a Find search bar in the toolbar that lets you locate products while arranging your collection. Type a keyword to search the entire collection on the server. Pinned products always remain visible so you can see the full merchandising context.

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How filtering works

The filter runs as a server-side search across every product in the collection, so it finds matches even in very large collections that load progressively in the grid. It matches against multiple product fields at once:

• Title and handle
• Vendor and product type
• Tags
• Variant title and SKU
• Configured attributes defined in your grid settings

Results refresh shortly after you stop typing. A counter next to the search bar shows how many products match the current query, so you can gauge the scope of your filter at a glance.

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Loading large collections

The product grid loads a page of products at a time and fetches additional pages as you scroll. This keeps the editor responsive even on collections with thousands of products. When you type in the Find bar, the same paginated loading applies to the filtered results. Additional matches load as you scroll through them.

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Behavior while filtering

• Pinned products stay visible. Regardless of the search term, all pinned items remain in the grid so you never lose sight of your merchandising anchors.
• Drag-and-drop is disabled. Reordering is temporarily disabled while a filter is active to prevent accidental position changes on a partial list. Clear the search to resume dragging.
• Shift-click selection respects the filter. When you shift-click to select a range of products, only the visible (filtered) items are included in the range.

Click the clear button or press the Escape key in the search field to reset the filter and return to the full product list.

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When to use filtering

• Large collections — Locate a specific product in a collection with hundreds of items so you can pin or inspect it.
• Vendor or brand audits — Filter by vendor to review how a particular brand is represented in the collection.
• SKU lookup — Search by SKU to find the exact variant you need to pin.
• Tag-based review — Filter by tag (e.g., “sale” or “new-arrival”) to see which tagged products are in the collection before creating expressions.

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See also

• Expressions & Automation
• Merchandising Rules
• Variant Breakouts