You can use the Shopify Search & Discovery app to create filters for your online store that let customers refine which products are displayed on collection pages and in search results. For example, a store that sells watches could create filters for brand name, price, dial size, and water resistance.
Considerations for adding filters
Review the following considerations for using the Shopify Search & Discovery app:
- Collections that contain more than 5,000 products don't display filters. Consider dividing large collections into smaller collections that can display filters. For example, instead of creating a single Women fashion collection, you can create smaller collections based on the type of apparel, such as Tops, Jeans, and Boots.
- A search that produces more than 100,000 results doesn't display filters.
- A filter can display a maximum of 100 filter values on your store. If your filter has more than 100 possible values, then some values won't be displayed to customers. You can reduce the number of possible filter values by grouping similar values. A filter group can have a maximum of 200 unique filter values, and your store can have a maximum of 1,000 filter groups across all selected filter settings.
- In the Shopify Search & Discovery app, a filter displays a maximum of 1,000 filter values. Metafield filters might display fewer than 1,000 values because there is a limit to how many metafields in the store are checked for unique values. Filter values not displayed in the app can still be displayed on your store to customers, provided the filter is displaying fewer than 100 filter values.
- Translations aren't supported for the Vendor and Tags filter values. The product tag filter only displays to customers shopping in your store's default language. Vendor filter values are always based on your store's default language.
- Filter value translations are based on the languages published for your online store, and won't display translations for markets set up with International.
- The price filter doesn't display for currencies other than your shop's default currency.
Filter types
All stores can display the same standard filters and you can create custom filters unique to your product catalog. You can have a combination of standard and custom filters, up to a maximum of 25 filters for your store.
Each filter source can only be used one time for a store's filters. For example, if you have the Price filter active on your store, then Price is greyed out and can't be selected as the source for a new filter.
Standard filters
Standard filters for Availability, Category, Price, Product type, Tags, and Vendor are available to all stores.
Custom filters
Custom filters are based on the product options, metafields, or metaobjects used in your store.
Product option filters
Product option filters are based on the product options you've added to your products.
For example, if you've added a "Size" product option to your clothing products with values like "Small", "Medium", and "Large", then a corresponding "Size" product option filter option will be available in the Search & Discovery app.
If you created product option filters, and have migrated your product options to category metafields, then remove these filters and add category metafield filters instead.
Category metafield filters
Filters for category metafields require products use Shopify's Standard Product Taxonomy for categories and attributes.
For example, a product in the "Shirts" category can have category metafields Color, Size, and Neckline. Once you've set values for these metafields, the Search & Discovery app will list the category metafields as filter options.
The Search & Discovery app displays all possible values from the base taxonomy attribute for category metafield-based filters. For example, if you have a wrist watch product with category metafields "Dial color" and "Band color", then the app will list the same set of values for both filters since they share the same base "Color" attribute in Shopify's Product taxonomy for watches. However, your storefront only displays the color values that are used by the filtered products and that correspond to the specific category metafield of the filter (Only dial colors for the "Dial color" filter, and only band colors for the "Band color" filter).
Custom metafield filters
Filters can be based on metafields and metaobjects unique to your store. This is useful for creating filters for your product catalog that aren't found in Shopify's Standard Product Taxonomy. For example, if you sell children's toys, then you can create a custom Age product metafield filter. You can also create visual filters with metaobjects to help customers quickly understand your filters.
The metafields must have a metafield definition to be used as a filter. Learn how to add a metafield definition. You can create metafield filters for the following value types:
- Single line text
- Single line text (List)
- Decimal
- Integer
- True or false
- Metaobject reference
- Metaobject reference (List)
After your metafields are set up on your products or variants, you can select the metafield definition as a filter when editing your filters.