Publishing pushes a layout from Instant to your connected Shopify store as theme files. After publishing, shoppers see your design on your storefront — at a page URL, on assigned products or collections, or wherever the layout type applies.
What publish does
When you publish, Instant runs three steps and shows the progress in the publish menu:
Preparing to publish — Instant gets your layout ready.
Optimizing Liquid, CSS & JS — the output is compiled for the storefront.
Deploying to Shopify — the theme files are uploaded to your selected theme.
Each layout type goes live differently:
Pages publish to
/pages/{handle}, or to your root URL when set as the home page.Blog posts publish to
/blogs/{blog}/{handle}under the blog you assign.Sections become available in the Shopify theme editor for placement.
Product and collection templates apply to the products or collections you assign.
Headers, footers, and carts take effect once you set them as your main header, footer, or cart.
Before you publish
Your Shopify store must be connected. If it isn't, the publish menu prompts you to connect first.
At least one layout must exist in the project — the Publish button is disabled on an empty project.
Your plan must allow publishing the layout type, and you must be within your plan's publish limits.
Instant also recommends enabling Instant Embed on your theme. If it isn't active, Instant prompts you during publish; you can enable it or skip and publish anyway.
Publish a layout
Select a layout in the Layouts & layers panel.
Click Publish in the header bar (shortcut:
Ctrl+Shift+S/Cmd+Shift+S).Review the publish menu — it shows your store URL, the publish status, and quick actions.
Optionally expand Advanced options to change the target theme, or to overwrite content set in Shopify.
Click Publish {layout type}.
Watch the progress steps complete.
On the first publish of a layout, Instant shows a success screen with the most relevant next step.
Which theme receives the publish
By default, Instant publishes to your store's live theme — the one shoppers currently see. You can point publishing at a draft (non-live) theme instead on the Pro plan and up. Choose the target theme in Settings → Shopify. See Publish to live or draft themes.
Plan availability
You can build and preview every layout type on any plan. Publishing some layout types and features requires a paid plan:
Feature | Plan |
Publish your home page | Starter and up |
Publish a cart drawer | Pro and up |
Publish to a draft theme | Pro and up |
Shopify Markets across all layout types | Business (sections support Shopify Markets on every plan) |
Product and collection templates and custom headers and footers also require a paid plan, and pages, blogs, sections, and templates each have per-plan publish limits. Your plan's exact limits are shown in Settings → Plans. Free layouts publish with a Built with Instant badge, which you can remove on Starter and up.
Republishing
Republish a layout whenever you change its design in Instant. You don't need to republish for Shopify data — product titles, prices, and inventory update automatically.
To resync everything at once (for example after switching themes), go to Settings → Shopify → Published layouts → Republish all. This redeploys every published layout to the currently selected theme.
Unpublishing
To take a layout off your storefront, use Unpublish from the layout's ⋯ menu. See Unpublish a layout.