Sold-out products and unpublished products need different settings. A product can be sold out while its page remains available, or it can be a draft with no public page to visit.
Use the instructions for Product groups when swatches link separate Shopify products. Use the variant instructions when choices belong to one Shopify product.
Open Appearance > Product groups.
Find Out of stock.
Choose Out of stock behavior.
Select Save.
Setting | What happens to a sold-out swatch |
|---|---|
Show normally | It remains visible and clickable without a sold-out mark. |
Cross out | It is crossed out and remains clickable. |
Cross out and disable | It is crossed out and cannot be clicked. |
Disable | It cannot be clicked, without a cross-out mark. |
Hide | It is hidden from the swatch list. |
If shoppers should still be able to visit a sold-out product, choose Cross out or Show normally. A clickable swatch does not make the product available to buy; Shopify still controls purchase availability.
You can also enable Put out-of-stock swatches at the end to move visible sold-out choices after available ones.
Open Appearance > Variant swatches.
Find the section for the style you use: Button swatches, Color or image swatches, or Variant image swatches.
Choose Out of stock style.
Select Save.
Buttons support Show normally, Strike through, and Cross out. Color/image and variant-image swatches support Show normally and Cross out. These styles change the appearance of unavailable choices; they do not change Shopify inventory or make a sold-out variant purchasable.
If Use same settings as color or image swatches is selected under Variant image swatches, change the color/image settings or turn off inheritance to set a separate style.
Under General, Hide out-of-stock swatches for products with one option hides sold-out choices on product pages only when the product has one option. For example, it applies to a product with Color alone, not one with both Color and Size. You can also enable Move out-of-stock swatches to the end.
Variant swatches do not have the product-group setting Cross out and disable. If a variant choice cannot be selected, send support the product URL and the option/value affected so the theme's variant behavior can be checked.
For product groups:
Open Settings > Product groups.
Find Rules.
Enable Hide inactive products.
Select Save.
Hide inactive products hides draft, archived, and unpublished products from the swatch list without removing their group memberships. Archived products also have a separate removal setting, described below. Check these settings when a swatch links to a product that is no longer publicly available.
If you are testing a group made from draft products, hidden swatches can be expected. Publishing the products makes their pages available. Turning off Hide inactive products can expose their swatches, but does not publish the products or make draft links work for shoppers.
In Settings > Product groups > Rules, Remove archived products is enabled by default. When it is on, archiving a product in Shopify permanently removes its memberships from product groups; it does not just hide the swatches. The Shopify product itself is not deleted.
Making the product active again does not restore its manual group memberships. Open each affected group in Product groups, add the product again, check its swatch, and select Save.
To keep memberships when you archive products, turn off Remove archived products and select Save before archiving. Leave Hide inactive products enabled to hide those products from shoppers. Turning off removal later does not restore memberships already removed.
For groups managed by an automation, membership also depends on the source collection or metafield and the automation's next run. Check the automation's source rather than relying on manual additions.
On Advanced and Premium, open Settings > Product groups > Shopify Markets and enable Hide products not published in market, then select Save.
This hides product-group swatches for products unavailable in the visitor's market. It is separate from stock status and from hiding inactive products across the store.
