Shopify Updates April 2026: Every Change Merchants & Devs Need to Know

Key takeaways

• API 2026-04 is live with discount tags, a mandatory @idempotent directive on inventory adjustments and refunds, and app-owned metaobjects that no longer require access scopes.
• Shopify Scripts can no longer be edited or published from April 15. Full execution shutdown is June 30 — migrate to Functions now.
• Sidekick Pulse is rolling out: proactive recommendations surfaced from store data without having to prompt.
• POS got a cash management overhaul — register sessions, reason codes, shared drawers, and a new custom cash management API.
• POS v11.5 on April 27 changes how custom discount amounts apply on line items.

April is the consolidation month after Winter ‘26. Where March shipped the headline features, April is about the platform layer underneath — API 2026-04 going live, the Scripts sunset clock ticking down, and POS getting a rare cash-handling overhaul.

Related guide: Shopify Sidekick: current limitations.

Related guide: modifying checkout.liquid in Shopify Plus.

April 2026: Platform Hardening

With Winter ‘26 still rolling out to merchants, April’s theme is platform stability and deprecation enforcement. Three specific things to track:

API 2026-04 is the current supported version. Any app still targeting an earlier version should plan a migration window. The new version is the one with the mandatory @idempotent directive on a set of inventory and refund mutations.

Shopify Scripts editing and publishing stops on April 15. Execution continues until June 30. If you have Scripts running checkout logic today, the Functions migration is the critical path for Q2.

France compliance (Comply app) deadline was April 13 for merchants already on POS v11.3+. If you haven’t activated it and you sell in France, sales on POS will be blocked.

AI & Sidekick

Sidekick Pulse — proactive recommendations.

Related guide: how to use Shopify Sidekick.

Sidekick now surfaces recommendations on its own rather than waiting for you to ask. It watches store data, identifies things like breaking customer journeys or products worth pushing based on market trends, and posts the recommendations into the Home feed. This is the specific implementation of the “proactive Sidekick” direction previewed in Winter ‘26.

Natural-language theme editing.

You can now tell Sidekick “make this button rounded” or “change the hero headline” and have it modify the theme settings directly. No code, no theme editor clicking, no developer.

Sidekick Skills — save and share prompts.

Related guide: Shopify Sidekick prompts.

Teams can now save their best Sidekick prompts, reuse them across the store, and share them with other merchants. This turns common workflows — new product launch, seasonal refresh, cart abandonment analysis — into repeatable shortcuts.

Sidekick app extensions for developers.

App developers can now build Sidekick extensions that expose their app’s data and actions to Sidekick prompts. From a merchant’s perspective: email platforms, review apps, and analytics tools start appearing as answers inside Sidekick without a tab switch.

If you want a quick read on whether your own store is set up for the AI shopping agents these features increasingly assume, the Shopify AI readiness checker audits the structured-data, schema, and machine-legibility signals AI agents look for.

Merchant & Admin

Discount tags.

Discounts now support tags — searchable labels for grouping and filtering promotions in the admin. Useful for merchants running dozens of concurrent discount codes across affiliate, campaign, and seasonal workflows.

Analytics insights expanded.

Automated data summaries on the Home feed now include Sessions and Fulfillments alongside the existing metrics. Shopify is monitoring 80+ new data combinations to flag trends. The feature is available to merchants averaging 10+ orders per week.

Related guide: adding custom tracking events in Shopify.

POS & Retail

Cash management overhaul.

POS cash handling has been rebuilt. Register sessions show full open/close summaries, staff can apply reason codes for non-cash actions, and the admin has a new Register Sessions tab with expected cash balances by location. A material upgrade for multi-location retailers in particular.

Custom cash management via new APIs.

New GraphQL APIs and UI extensions let apps build shared cash drawer workflows, pull enhanced financial data, add custom reason codes, and bulk-export session data. For multi-location retailers that were patching around POS’s old model, this removes a lot of custom tooling.

POS v11.5 releases April 27.

The headline change in v11.5: custom discount amounts on line items now apply per unit rather than as a total across the line. If you have a workflow that relied on the old per-line-total behaviour — a $10 custom discount on a 3-item line applying as $10 total — you’ll need to update retail procedures before the release.

Deprecations & Compliance

Shopify Scripts — editing stops April 15, execution stops June 30.

After April 15, you can no longer edit or publish Scripts. Existing ones keep running until June 30, at which point they stop executing entirely. If your store depends on Scripts for checkout logic — shipping rules, payment customisations, discount stacking — the migration path is Shopify Functions. Plan this as a Q2 critical path item.

Comply app required in France (POS v11.3+).

Merchants on POS v11.3 or newer who sell in France must have the Comply app activated as of April 13. Without it, POS sales are blocked.

Developer Updates

Related guide: adding structured data to Shopify.

API 2026-04 release.

The API version that teased features through Winter ‘26 is now live. Headline changes:

• Discount tags — admin and API support for labelling and filtering discounts.
• BXGY prerequisites — discount functions now let you specify “Buy X” conditions for buy-one-get-one promotions.
• App-owned metaobjects — no longer require access scopes, which simplifies how apps model their own custom data.
• Barcode fields on inventory shipments — up to 255-character barcodes can be assigned, set, or cleared via new mutations.
• Payments Apps API — detailed decline codes and a new source field for rejected payments. The RISKY code is deprecated in favour of FRAUD_SUSPECTED.
• Mandatory @idempotent directive — required on inventory adjustment and refund mutations. Apps must add this before migrating to 2026-04.

Hydrogen April 2026 release.

Hydrogen now targets Storefront API 2026-04. Two changes to flag:

• The Storefront API proxy is now mandatory for Hydrogen storefronts. Apps not using the proxy need to update their request pattern.
• Backend consent mode is enabled by default.

UI Extensions testing library.

Shopify shipped an official testing library for UI extensions, covering Checkout, Admin, Customer Accounts, and POS surfaces. You can now write unit tests for extensions without running a full Shopify host — a meaningful speedup for apps with complex extension logic.

API release notes retired.

Shopify has stopped publishing formal API release notes. The developer changelog at shopify.dev/changelog is now the canonical source for API changes.