Pin placement
Layers infers pin placement from where you drag each pin in the product grid — you don’t pick a mode. Layers looks at your arrangement and decides whether each pin should front-pack at the top or hold its exact slot.How Layers classifies each pin
Sequential pins (front-pack at the top) are the leading run of pins connected to position 1. Layers groups them in order at the top of the collection, ahead of any organic products. This is the classic pinning behavior — use it when you want a handful of products to appear first and don’t care about the slots beneath them. Absolute pins (hold an exact slot) are any pins that are not connected to slot 1 — there is at least one organic (unpinned) product above them in the grid. Layers holds these pins at their exact 1-based slot at search time, with organic products filling around them. You can mix both kinds of pins in a single rule. Layers reclassifies pins automatically whenever you reorder the grid. Dragging a pin away from the top run turns it into an absolute pin, and dragging it back into the top run makes it sequential again.Examples
| Arrangement in the grid | Result on the storefront |
|---|---|
| Pins at positions 1, 2, 3, 4 | All four pins front-pack at the top, in order |
| Pins at positions 1, 2, 3, then a pin at position 8 (organic between) | Pins 1–3 front-pack at the top; the fourth pin holds slot 8 |
| Pins at positions 5 and 6 (organic above) | Both pins hold their exact slots (5 and 6); no front-packing |
Slot collisions and overflow
Layers clamps absolute pin slots to the size of the collection. If two absolute pins would land on the same slot, or if a slot falls past the end of the collection, Layers cascades the colliding pin to the next free slot so every pin still has a place.Pinning while filtering products
When you pin a product while the Find search filter is active, Layers front-packs the new pin instead of treating its filtered-list index as a real slot. This avoids accidentally pinning a product to slot 12 when position 12 in the filtered view corresponds to a completely different slot in the full collection. Clear the filter if you want to drop a pin at a specific deep slot.Sequential-only rules use the same fast placement path as before — there is no performance change unless a rule actually has absolute pins.
Conditional pins
Conditional pins extend manual merchandising by allowing you to control when a pinned product should be active. Instead of pins being permanently visible, you can configure conditions that determine when each pin appears in your collection.Condition types
Always Pinned is the default behavior where the product stays pinned at its assigned position indefinitely. Use this for evergreen products that should always appear prominently. Scheduled Pins allow you to set a specific time window during which the pin is active. Configure a start date and time, and optionally an end date and time. The pin automatically activates when the schedule begins and deactivates when it ends. This is ideal for promotional periods, seasonal campaigns, or limited-time features. Advanced Conditions give you full control using custom rules based on product attributes. The pin is only active when the conditions evaluate to true for the pinned product. For example, you can configure a pin to only be active while the product is in stock, or while a specific variant is available.How conditional pins work
When you configure a conditional pin, the system continuously evaluates the conditions: For scheduled pins, a background process checks the current time against your configured schedule and automatically enables or disables the pin as needed. You don’t need to manually manage pins for time-based promotions. For advanced conditions, the system evaluates the rules against the current product data whenever the product is updated. If a product goes out of stock and your condition requires availability, the pin is automatically disabled until the product becomes available again.Disabled conditional pins are visually indicated in the merchandising interface so you can see which pins are currently inactive and why.
Use cases for conditional pins
Promotional campaigns: Schedule pins for Black Friday, holiday sales, or flash promotions without manual intervention. Inventory-aware merchandising: Only pin products while they’re in stock, automatically removing out-of-stock items from prominent positions. Seasonal rotations: Set up pins for seasonal collections that automatically activate and deactivate based on dates. Attribute-based visibility: Pin products only when they meet specific criteria, such as having a certain tag or being from a particular vendor.Pins are scoped to their collection
Pins are always tied to the collection targeted by their merchandising rule. When you open a rule in the editor, only pinned products that are currently members of that collection appear in the pin list. If a product is later removed from the rule’s collection (for example, the merchandiser unassigns it in Shopify or a dynamic collection’s conditions no longer include it), Layers automatically hides that pin from the rule editor. The pin no longer influences the collection’s ordering, so you do not need to clean up stale pins by hand. If the product is re-added to the collection, its pin becomes visible in the editor again at its original position. This keeps the pin list in the editor aligned with what shoppers actually see on the storefront, so you never spend time reordering pins for products that can’t appear in the collection anyway.Default variant for pins
When you pin a product to a specific position, you can optionally set a default variant for that pin. This controls which variant’s data (price, image, and options) appears for the pinned product on the collection page. This is useful when a product has multiple variants and you want to showcase a specific one. For example, if you pin a jacket and set the default variant to “Color: Navy,” the collection tile will display the Navy variant’s price and image rather than the first variant. Default variant options set on a pin take priority over request-leveldefaultSelectedOptions but are overridden by explicit variant filters and keyword-matched variant selection. See the full variant selection priority for the complete order of precedence.
Default variant selection for pins is also available in visual ranking rules. When both a merchandising rule pin and a ranking rule pin specify default variant options for the same product, the ranking rule pin takes precedence.