Advanced

How the desktop works under the hood, for anyone customizing or troubleshooting.

Windows are real pages

Every window that shows your content — a product, a collection, a page, the cart, search — is a real page at a real address. Clicking a link to one fetches just that page's section from Shopify and opens it as a window, and the address bar changes to the page's address. Load that address directly and you get the same window, on a fresh desktop.

So links can be shared and bookmarked, search engines index every product, ads can land on a product, and the back button works. Games, the music, videos and photos have no address: they aren't pages, and a back button that closed the music would be a surprise.

If a link to one of your pages reloads the whole desktop instead of opening a window, it's a kind of page the theme doesn't open as a window — a link to another site, a file, or an app's page.

What loads, and when

The screensaver engine and the games are the two heaviest parts of the theme, and most visits use neither. So neither loads with the page:

• The screensaver loads shortly before the idle timer would start it, when someone hovers Sleep or the music disc, or when either is pressed.

• The games load the first time a game window opens.

• 3D models, and the AR viewer, load the first time a model is chosen.

• Videos in the product gallery load when chosen.

• You may also like and the cart's suggestions are fetched after their window is on screen.

In the theme editor

While you're in the editor, the theme holds back everything that would get in your way — the enter gate, the switch-on, the idle screensaver, music starting by itself, the email sign-up opening on a timer — and instead shows each thing when you select it. A section you change is re-drawn by Shopify and keeps its window open.

Reduced motion

Visitors whose device asks for reduced motion get: no switch-on animation, no CRT flicker or roll, no idle screensaver, a still wallpaper image instead of video, and the 3D password logo held still. Everything they choose to start — Sleep, the visualizer, a game — still works.

Editing the code

If you customize the theme's code, keep a copy of the original. Theme updates replace the theme's files, so edits made directly to them are lost when you update.

For custom work, get in touch.