How to Set Up Product Filters in Shopify

Who it is for

Stores with more than a few dozen products

Time needed

An afternoon, plus data cleanup

What you need

Search & Discovery and a 2.0 theme

On a collection with more than a couple of dozen products, filters decide whether shoppers find what they want or leave. They also expose messy product data faster than anything else. If half your products say "Colour" and the other half "Color", your shoppers will see two filters, and neither will work properly.

This guide shows how to set up Shopify product filters properly: preparing the data, creating the filters, grouping values, using metafields, turning filters on in your theme, and what developers need to know about the filter URLs and Liquid. Limits and steps come from Shopify's help center and shopify.dev as I checked them on 7 November 2026.

How Shopify filters work

There are two halves to every filter setup:

• The Search & Discovery app, free and built by Shopify, decides which filters exist, what they're called, which values they show and how values are grouped. The same app handles search synonyms, product boosts and product recommendations.
• Your theme decides how the filters look and where they sit: a sidebar, a horizontal bar or a drawer. Filters work with any compatible theme, which in practice means an Online Store 2.0 theme. Swatches and image values need a theme that supports them.

The same filters appear on collection pages and on search results. Shoppers combine them in a predictable way: different filters narrow the results (size M and color blue), while several values in one filter widen them (blue or green).

The limits to plan around

The 5,000-product rule catches large stores out most often. An "All products" or "Sale" collection on a big catalog can quietly lose its filters. Split very large collections by category instead.

Step 1: Clean your product data

Filters read straight from your products, so start there. I spend more time on this step than on the filters themselves.

• Option names. Use one name for each option across every product: "Color", not a mix of "Color", "Colour" and "Shade". Each distinct name becomes its own filter source.
• Option values. Agree on spelling and case. "Navy" and "navy " become separate values.
• Product type and vendor. Fill them in consistently, because both are standard filters.
• Category. Set Shopify's product category on each product. It powers the Category filter and the category metafields that come with it.
• Tags. If you filter by tags, prefix them by purpose, such as style_minimal, so filter tags don't mix with internal ones.
• Metafields. For attributes like material, fit or room, create metafields with a type Shopify can filter on (see Step 4).

The bulk editor (Products, select products, Edit products) is the fastest way to fix types, vendors and metafield values across many products at once.

Step 2: Create filters in Search & Discovery

1. Install the app. Install Shopify Search & Discovery from the Shopify App Store if it isn't already on your store.
2. Open the filters. Go to Apps > Search & Discovery > Filters.
3. Add a filter. Click Add filter and choose a Source, such as Availability, Price, a product option like Size, or a metafield.
4. Name it for shoppers. Optionally rename the label, for example "Size" instead of an internal option name.
5. Choose its behavior and display. Depending on the source, set how values combine and whether they show as text, color swatches or images.
6. Group and sort values if needed (see Step 3).
7. Save. Repeat for each filter, then drag them into the order shoppers will use most.

Which filters to add depends on the products, but a sensible starting order for most stores is: availability, price, the main option (size or color), category or product type, then one or two attributes from metafields. Five or six filters that matter beat fifteen that don't.

Step 3: Group messy values

Grouping merges several values under one shopper-facing name. If your products use "Onyx", "Ebony" and "Midnight", you can show them all as "Black". Shoppers get a short, clear list while your product names keep their character.

Grouping is set per filter in the app. The Category filter doesn't support grouping, and a filter group can hold up to 200 unique values. Grouping also helps you stay under the 100 values a filter can show on the storefront.

Step 4: Filter by metafields

Metafields let you filter by attributes that aren't options, such as material, fit, finish, room or diet. Filtering supports these metafield types:

• Single line text, and lists of single line text
• Integer and decimal numbers
• True or false
• Metaobject references, and lists of them

To set one up, create the definition under Settings > Metafields and metaobjects > Products, fill in values (the bulk editor helps), then add a filter in Search & Discovery with that metafield as its source. A list of single line text suits attributes where a product can have several values, such as "Wool" and "Cashmere". A metaobject reference suits values you want to control centrally, with a fixed list of entries. My metafields guide covers types in detail.

Step 5: Turn filters on in your theme

Creating filters doesn't show them until your theme displays them. In Dawn and its sibling themes:

1. Open the collection template. In Online Store > Themes > Edit theme, choose Collections > Default collection from the template menu.
2. Select the Product grid section. Under Filtering and sorting, tick Filters and Sorting.
3. Pick a layout. Set Filter layout to Horizontal, Vertical or Drawer. Vertical suits larger catalogs on desktop. Drawer keeps a small collection clean.
4. Do the same for search. Switch to the search template and turn on the same settings in the Search results section.
5. Test on a phone. Open a collection, apply two filters and check the result count and how easy it is to clear them.

Other themes put these settings in a similarly named collection section. If your theme has no filter settings at all, it's probably a vintage theme, and my guide to Online Store 2.0 explains what moving involves.

For developers: filter URLs and Liquid

Filters are applied through URL parameters in the format filter.scope.attribute=value, where the scope is p for product or v for variant:

/collections/all?filter.p.product_type=shoes&filter.v.option.color=red
/collections/all?filter.v.price.gte=20&filter.v.price.lte=50
/collections/all?filter.v.availability=1
/collections/all?filter.p.m.custom.material=wool

That makes filtered views linkable, which is handy for menus and campaign links. Price values use the store's default currency. When a variant filter is applied, the product's featured_media and url switch to the first matching variant, so a shopper filtering by "red" sees the red product photo.

In Liquid, collection.filters holds the filters set up for the collection. Each filter has a type of list, price_range or boolean, and a presentation of text, swatch or image for list filters. A minimal list filter looks like this:

{%- for filter in collection.filters -%}
  {%- if filter.type == 'list' -%}
    <fieldset>
      <legend>{{ filter.label }}</legend>
      {%- for value in filter.values -%}
        <label>
          <input type="checkbox" name="{{ value.param_name }}" value="{{ value.value }}" {% if value.active %}checked{% endif %}>
          {{ value.label }} ({{ value.count }})
        </label>
      {%- endfor -%}
    </fieldset>
  {%- endif -%}
{%- endfor -%}

Each value also has url_to_add and url_to_remove for link-based filters, and collection.products_count gives the count after filtering. Filters must be created in the admin first. Liquid can only display them.

Common mistakes

• Building filters before fixing data. Duplicate option names and values become duplicate filters.
• Huge collections. Over 5,000 products and the filters disappear.
• Too many filters. Every filter is something to scroll past on a phone. Remove ones nobody uses.
• Tag soup. Filtering by unprefixed tags shows internal tags to shoppers.
• Wrong metafield type. Multi-line or rich text metafields can't be used as filters. Use single line text or a metaobject reference.
• Forgetting search results. Turn filters on in the search template as well as collections.

Product filter checklist

• Standardize option names, option values, product types and vendors.
• Set product categories and create filterable metafields for key attributes.
• Install Search & Discovery and add five or six useful filters.
• Group messy values and set swatches where your theme supports them.
• Turn on filters and sorting in the collection and search templates.
• Keep filtered collections under 5,000 products.
• Test on a phone: apply, combine and clear filters.

Next steps

Filters work best on a clear collection structure, so if your catalog has grown messy, read my guide to structuring collections and navigation alongside this one. If you need filters designed into a custom collection layout, or your product data cleaned at scale, that's part of my Shopify development service, which starts from $300 with a fixed quote.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Filters, Shopify Help Center
2. Storefront filtering, Shopify.dev
3. filter object, Shopify.dev
4. Shopify Search & Discovery, Shopify App Store
5. Dawn theme source code, Shopify on GitHub

Related services and work

Written by Ashraf Siddik

I'm a Shopify developer and CRO specialist. I have built and improved Shopify stores since 2018, completed more than 1,000 projects, and hold a 4.96 average rating across 719 client reviews.

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