Variant pickers let shoppers choose size, color, material, and other options before adding to cart. In Insert → Shopify → Variant you get four picker presets:

The Variant group also contains Selling plan for subscriptions — see Selling plans and subscriptions.

Insert a picker on a product template or inside a container that has Shopify content connected, so its options populate from the product.

Use Basic for small option sets (S / M / L). Use Dropdown when space is tight or an option has many values. Use Color picker when the option is a color. Use Custom when your design needs icons, cards, or another non-standard layout — give each clickable element a Select variant option action targeting the right option value.

The Color picker shows color swatches instead of plain buttons. For the swatches to render the correct colors, your color option must have color metafields configured in Shopify — Shopify's category metadata provides the color values the swatches use. Without these, the Color picker won't display colors correctly. See Shopify's guide on using category metafields.

Each picker controls one Shopify option. Select the picker, open its variant settings in the Design panel, and choose which product option it controls.

By default, Instant matches options by name (for example, "Color" or "Size"). You can switch the whole project to match by position instead:

Position matching helps when you reuse one layout across products whose option names differ but whose order is consistent — for example, option 1 is always size and option 2 is always color. When it's on, the Design panel labels options as Option 1, Option 2, and so on.

Preview with products that have one option and products that have several. Confirm that selecting a variant updates connected Price and Image elements on the same page.