Set up variant swatches

Variant swatches replace the default option dropdowns on products whose colors or sizes are variants of one Shopify product. Setup is four steps: sync your options, style each one, choose where swatches appear, and turn them on.

Note

Variant swatches load through the product page widget embed, so make sure it’s enabled first. It’s the same embed that powers product groups.

Sync your options

Open Color Swatches and go to Variant swatches. The app pulls your store’s options (Color, Size, Material, and so on) from Shopify automatically the first time you open the page.

If you add or rename options later, click Sync options in the top-right to pull the latest.

Choose a style for each option

Each option appears as a row with a Swatch style dropdown. Pick how that option should look:

• Color or image - circles filled with a color or a small image. Best for Color.
• Variant image - the variant’s own photo as the swatch. Best when each variant has a distinct picture.
• Pill / Button - styled text buttons. Best for Size, Material, or Style.

Click an option to configure it. For color or image swatches, the app fills in the colors for you - see Auto-detect colors below. For long option lists, you can also organize values into sections.

Auto-detect colors

An option styled as Color or image needs a swatch for each of its values. You don’t have to assign them by hand: when an option has unassigned values, an Auto-detect colors banner appears on its page. Click it and the app matches your values in two passes:

1. Known colors first. Each value name is matched against your existing swatches (including their aliases) and a built-in list of common color names in many languages, so Black, Noir, and Schwarz all find the same swatch. Combined names like Red/Blue become a two-color swatch automatically.
2. AI for the rest. Names that nothing matched - creative ones like Ocean Breeze - are sent to an AI model that suggests a hex code, and the app creates a color swatch from it.

The only thing the AI ever sees is the list of color names. No product, customer, or store data is sent.

When the run finishes, you’ll see a summary of how many values were matched. Review the results and correct any swatch by clicking the value and picking a different one - AI colors are good guesses, not your exact brand shades. If you’d rather assign everything yourself, dismiss the banner; you can re-run detection any time from Auto-detect colors in the page actions.

Choose where swatches appear

In the Status card, set Displayed on:

• Product and collection pages
• Product pages only
• Collection pages only

Turn them on

In the same Status card, set the status:

• Enabled - variant swatches on every product.
• Only selected products - pick specific products with the product picker. Useful for testing on a few products first.
• Disabled - off.

That’s it. Open a product on your storefront and the dropdowns are now swatches.

Next steps

• Style your swatches - shapes, sizes, spacing, and out-of-stock handling.
• Organize values into sections for options with many values.