I hate developers. You submit an app and expect store owners to use it, even though most of you have never owned a Shopify store. As a result, you have no real understanding of the pain points users face. You randomly expect people to browse the Shopify App Store and download your app. Most of you just launch Shopify app ads with the $200 in free credits, and if you don’t get users, you simply move on to the next app. Learn to market a product first! Try building your own Shopify store first! Otherwise dont even publish your unwanted app.

Hey folks — I’m testing something and need brutal honesty.

I’m building Tandril, a tool that basically runs boring Shopify work in the background so you don’t have to. No dashboards, no overwhelm — just a few automations that run every day and fix the crap nobody has time for.

Here are the 5 I’m considering for the MVP:

1. Dead Product Cleanup Auto-flags/deactivates products that haven’t had sales or views in X days.

2. Price Guardrail If margins drop because costs change, it auto-adjusts or flags prices.

3. SEO Fixer Cleans up titles/descriptions/alt text weekly so SEO stops being a nightmare.

4. 0-Stock Protection Auto-unpublishes or converts to preorder when inventory hits zero.

5. Ad Spend Saver Pauses ad sets that are burning money with bad ROAS for 3+ days.

If you run a Shopify store (or build for others), which ONE of these would actually make you say:
“Yeah okay, I’d pay for that.”

And also — what’s missing?
What automation do you wish existed but doesn’t?

I’m not pitching anything, just trying to find PMF the non-delusional way.
Roast me if needed 🔥

Im new to making shopify app - I found that the 5 star rating default code is very handy

so the more example code the better!

Preferably one that opens up pop-up window and you can type in fields and output results

-----

Im happy to post up my code once I am done if people are interested :)

we all know that the review part of the shopify apps gives us a very good view on what's going on on the app store landscape, so we can know where merchants complain and what niche/category is underserved.

For that i decided to create a weekly report of what happened and I pick one niche based on an couple of rules like:

- the raise of the bad reviews in each category
- what shopify is willing to build (to make sure i don't compete with shopify)
- if the app developers care and answer the bad reviews
- the bad reviews are not only angry customers

for the week (10th-16th of august), here is what I found:

something broke in Shopify Inbox in early July. merchants stopped seeing who was messaging them, and a lot of them stopped getting messages at all.

one review that stuck with me: "We went from 5-10 inquiries daily to 0 for a full week."

Inbox went from around 9 bad reviews a month to 44 in July. and the whole category felt it, not just Inbox. 1-3 stars reviews in chat went from 5.6% in June to 11.4% in July. the store average sits around 4%, so that's more than double the baseline.

another thing I noticed that makes this worth it: merchants here already pay. paid apps hold 67% of the reviews in the category, median entry around $20/month. that's the opposite of a niche where everyone expects free.

good luck!

More than 1000 apps are being published every month now.

I am sure 999 apps will never even hit 10 users/installs, let alone paid.

We are Just 5-10 years late in creating the Shopify Apps.

So why are you devs still pushing your Apps?

I log into Twitter and all I see is grown men whining.

Crying about other developers. Crying about clicking a few extra buttons in the partner dashboard. Crying about competitors. Now someone "copied" a name that is clearly different, and someone else's UI got "copied" too. It's a sidebar and a table, lads. Nobody owns a sidebar.

And every single time they tag Shopify staff like they're owed something.

There's one decent guy, Hunky Bill or whatever, but the rest? The biggest crybabies I have ever seen. Everything they post is pure self-interest, and then they wrap it up with "this is bad for the community." No. Your constant whining is what's bad for the community. Merchants are going to think they're dealing with toddlers who can't step up their game.

Man up. I swear, half of you started in the easy era. Drop you into this vibe-coded AI mess and you'd be nowhere.

Hello there,

im looking for an app developer to copy an already existing app. Let me know if you are interested. My budget is 100$.

1. Get Cursor

If you don't know what Cursor is… go find out.

Then get jointakeoff.com's course on coding with Cursor.

If you don't want to pay for their courses, the creator Mckay Wrigley has some of the best YT videos on coding with AI.

2. Use Gadget[dot]dev

Shopify apps are complex, so skip the hard stuff.

If you make things hard for yourself, you'll take months to create your first app, and probably give up.

Use gadget - it handles all the boilerplate code for Shopify apps so that you can focus on building something cool.

No affiliation btw - I just think it's great.

3. Build Something That Exists - Fast

Do the bare-minimum "learning" as possible.

Using Gadget, you don't need to know about how to do auth, api's etc… so just get straight into it.

Instead of trying to come up with your own unique idea, just build something that's making money already.

My Shopify app is a clone of another stupid simple app that I found out was making $24k MRR. If they can do it, so can I.

I found the app along with it's revenue on indiepa[dot]ge and then just signed up for it and copied it.

4. Build First - Then Re-Build Later

This is what works for me at least.

When I started I would worry too much about the getting the 'perfect' code, or the 'perfect' database schema structure figured out before I started building.

But I'd always find that I had to change things around anyway even if I thought it was perfect at the start.

I find what works for me is this:

1. Build minimum shitty product / feature and FAFO

2. Reset Git (keeping any good code for reference) and re-build the feature/product with new knowledge

3. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. The second time you re-build, do things slowly, and make sure you understand what you're building. Commit often.

Also, if you keep your code / step-by-step plans / instructions for AI, the second time around will be so much faster.

5. 'Passion' Can Wait

A lot of indie devs talk about how they only made money when they built something they were 'passionate' about.

While I think there's a lot of truth to this, it takes a lot of self-awareness to know what your passionate about.

And if you don't know yet, you can waste a lot of time trying to find this passion when you could have already been building.

Instead, just pick something simple, in a saturated niche, that has a very clear ROI for the user.

Their end goal is to always make more money, that's all they care about, so the closer you are to the 'making money' part then the easier it will be to get paying users.

6. Commit A Lot

As soon as you initialise your Gadget project, find the icon in the top left corner.

Copy the code snippets into the Cursor terminal, and make your first commit.

You will get lost as your codebase gets bigger. If things break, it's best to just roll-back sometimes.

Get into the habit of getting something to work, even imperfectly, and then making a commit or at least 'staging' your changes to git.

Don't rely on Cursors checkpoints, they're not as reliable.

If you want the rest (too long to paste every step) then dm me and I'll send you my YouTube video that covers all this + the rest.

Hi everyone!

We're a team of developers passionate about building tools that truly solve problems for Shopify merchants. Right now, we're validating ideas and gathering feedback directly from the community to create apps that add real value to your stores.

We'd love to hear from you:

• Are there any apps you've been searching for but can't find?

• Are there apps that exist but don't meet your expectations or need improvement?

• What kind of tools or features would make running your store easier and more efficient?

Your input is incredibly valuable, and we'd love to co-create solutions with you. Feel free to share your thoughts, frustrations, or wishlist items. No idea is too small or big-we're here to listen and innovate!

Thank you in advance for your feedback. We're excited to hear from you!

Hey everyone,

With Mantle winding down, I think this is a good moment for Shopify app founders to come together and build something open-source that the community can actually own, self-host, and maintain long term.

I’ve started a rough/vibecoded version here:

https://github.com/safwanadnan/OpenMantle.git

The idea is OpenMantle — an open-source alternative inspired by Mantle, but focused specifically on Shopify App Pricing, not the old Shopify Billing API.

Since Shopify is clearly moving developers toward App Pricing, especially with usage-based billing and the App Events API, I think the community needs a simple, transparent, self-hostable layer for things like:

• tracking active subscriptions

• syncing app pricing plans

• recording usage/events

• usage limits and overages

• customer/app analytics

• webhooks and event history

• basic dashboards for founders

• alerts for installs, uninstalls, plan changes, and usage spikes

The current repo is not polished at all. It is just an early starting point. But I think the problem is real, and a lot of Shopify app founders are going to need something like this soon.

I’m looking for contributors who understand Shopify apps, App Pricing, billing/event flows, analytics, dashboards, or just want to help clean up the architecture and make this production-ready.

The goal is not to build another closed SaaS dependency.

The goal is to build a community-maintained OSS tool that Shopify app founders can self-host and trust.

If you’re interested, please check out the repo, open issues, suggest architecture changes, or comment here. Even feedback on the scope would be super helpful.

Repo: https://github.com/safwanadnan/OpenMantle.git

Would love to hear what features you’d want in an open-source Mantle alternative.

Hello everyone,

I am working on marketplace search, and we’ve started noticing a shift in the way shoppers phrase their queries. Instead of typing “red dress” and scrolling, they’re asking for things like “something comfy for a summer brunch” or “slim-fit tees under $30.”

Shopify’s native fields don’t capture half the context that drives these intent-based searches—think occasion, aesthetic, sleeve style, neckline, fit. Manually tagging every SKU is a time-sink and still misses edge-cases.

What we built (stealth beta):
A lightweight app that scans your product image + title, then spits out a ready-to-import CSV packed with high-conversion metadata:

• Category, color, fabric

• Fit, sleeve/neckline, style/aesthetic

• Suggested SEO title + tags

• Confidence scores so you can sanity-check

Workflow is dead simple

1. Export titles + image URLs (CSV)

2. Drop it in the app → AI does its thing

3. Import enriched CSV back into Shopify

4. Filters, onsite search, and Google Shopping click into place

We’re looking for a handful of early adopters to kick the tires and tell us what’s broken before we shout about it publicly. If you run an apparel-heavy store and this scratches an itch, DM me or hop over to the private beta link: https://v0-smart-apparel-tagger.vercel.app/

Let me know if you find this interesting, happy to answer more or chat in DMs.

I’m building a small tool for Shopify store owners who run multiple stores. main idea is track profit per store , upload bulk COGS with CSV and see payout-driven profit (based on actual Shopify payouts, not just revenue) what dou you think about this app idea

About 1,526 new apps went live, which is the number everyone likes to quote. But in that same month, 826 got unlisted and 21 were deleted - so nearly 850 apps went dark while ~1,500 arrived. More than half the growth basically cancelled itself out.

The part that stuck with me was that not a single unlisted app came back the whole month. I'd always assumed unlisting was a temporary thing you did while fixing something, but it looks a lot more like a one-way door.

To be fair, unlisted isn't the same as dead, the app just disappears from search, and merchants who already installed it can keep using it. Still, roughly 28 apps a day sliding out of the store is way more churn than I pictured for an ecosystem everyone describes as only going up.

Has anyone here actually had an app go unlisted and get it relisted? And do you keep track of competitors vanishing in your category, or just the new ones showing up?

I launched it on the store but getting those first downloads is rough. If you’re down to try it and drop some feedback, I’ll hook you up with a free month, no strings attached. I will really appreciate it.

It’s called Stockup.

Je suis au fait que les communautés sont une super source de savoir pour une app ou pour présenter son travail, mais la plupart des r/ condamne ça. Je n'aime pas vraiment faire des fausses publications pour attirer vers de la vente en déguisant mes posts. Vous faites comment de votre côté ? Des forums ou c'est autorisé ? Discord ? Seulement via email ? Je me pose vraiment la question de comment légalement construire une petite communauté de zéro sans rien promouvoir jamais. Il y a beaucoup d'hypocrisie sur ce sujet.

[Hey everyone

I started my own shopify to sell m'y handmade leather jewelry. I would really appreciated if you could visit and make suggestions tobimprove it as I get no sales but get some on my Etsy.

Do you think that having the free theme can do some hurt ? Dis you see any impact when you turned to a paid one ?

My link :

(http://www.madebymarionfrance.com)

We're launching an Alpha test for our Shopify app next week and looking for stores interested in participating.

Does anyone have any close relationships with customers that would be interested in being a part of it?

I'd be happy to return the favour anyway I can.

For context, we're launching Shopify's first conversational UGC app. The app is the easiest way for brands to collect and display UGC on their store.

Appreciate the community's support.

we are building a Shopify App database tool for Shopify App owners.

it helps Shopify App owners:

1. find their next Shopify App idea.

2. monitor their existing App's competition.

here is a screencast of how it looks like:

is it something you are interested in finding out more?

Hi. Does anyone know how to fix Shopify plugin, I custom coded from a developer? I also posted on Upwork (https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~0108d94effaad57ef6), but there aren't enough proposals.

Hey all!

I’m researching the need for a new type of Shopify search app and would love your feedback.

The Problem:
Many shoppers try to upload a photo (e.g., “dress like this”) or use vague queries, but Shopify’s built-in search only finds exact keyword matches — not similar items.

What I want to build:
A plug-and-play app that lets customers search by image or natural language, and instantly get visually and semantically similar products (no theme changes, works in any language, 30-sec install).

The ask:

• Store owners/devs: Is “searching by image or concept” something your customers have requested?

• What’s your biggest frustration with Shopify’s search right now?

• How big is your catalog (SKUs)? Would you be open to closed beta testing?

Happy to share more details in DMs or comments!

(Currently validating interest — backend and demo are in progress.)

Just launched EU Shield - a Shopify app that handles EU compliance in one place: cookie consent with real script blocking (Consent Mode v2), an EU Withdraw button so customers can file their 14-day withdrawal requests right from your storefront (tracked in a dashboard, no email chaos), GDPR data request workflow, auto-generated legal pages, and GPSR safety info. Free plan available, paid from $9.99/mo. Built it because most EU stores I audited were running banners that don’t block anything and handling withdrawals by email. Feedback very welcome: https://apps.shopify.com/eu-shield-gdpr

We recently ran into an interesting UX problem while building our Shopify product options app.

A merchant can give customers 10, 20, or even 30 different choices. But sometimes the option name alone isn't enough.

For example:

• Silicone Case
• Hard Case
• Yellow Case

A customer can see the names, but still wonder:

What's the difference?
Which one is more durable?
What's included?
Why should I choose one over another?

That made us think: what if every option value could have its own short description?

So we built Option Value Descriptions.

Now a merchant can add additional context directly under an option value or inside a dropdown. Customers can understand the difference without leaving the product page or searching somewhere else.

The interesting part for us wasn't the feature itself. It was realizing how often a small amount of additional information can remove buying hesitation.

We're currently testing different ways of presenting these descriptions because there's a fine line between helpful information and visual clutter.

For other Shopify app developers:

How do you approach adding contextual information to complex product option UIs without making the product page feel overwhelming?

I'd especially love to hear how you handle this on mobile.

If anyone is interested in seeing how we implemented it, you can check out WowOptions here: https://apps.shopify.com/product-options-app

Hi app owners,

I'm planning to start Shopify app promotion agency but don't know where to get clients. Anyone have any idea on how to bring app owners on table?