I changed my Shopify theme

Publishing a different theme turns the gate off. Here is how to put it back, and how to avoid the gap.

The app embed that shows your age gate is attached to one specific theme — the one that was published when you turned it on. Publish a different theme and the new one has no embed, so your age gate stops appearing and visitors go straight to your storefront.

Nothing is lost. Your templates, settings, and allowlist all live in the app and are untouched. You only need to switch the embed on again in the new theme.

Re-enable it on the new theme

1. Go to Online Store → Themes.
2. On your newly published theme, click Customize.
3. In the left sidebar, click the App embeds icon (a jigsaw puzzle piece).
4. Toggle Loman Age Verification on.
5. Click Save.

Save, or nothing changesAs with the first install, flipping the toggle is not enough. The theme editor's Save button is what applies it.

Duplicating a theme

Duplicating a theme copies its app embed settings, so a duplicate of a theme that had the embed on will have it on too. It is still worth checking after you publish the copy — a theme duplicated before you set the app up will not have it.

Trying a theme without exposing the store

If you are auditioning a new theme and do not want a window where the storefront is public:

1. Turn the embed on in the unpublished theme first — open Customize on it from Online Store → Themes, enable Loman Age Verification, and save.
2. Then publish the theme.

The embed is already in place, so there is no gap.

Why this matters more here

For most apps, a theme publish that drops an app embed is an inconvenience. For this one it means your age-restricted store is live with nothing in front of it, and nothing will tell you — your storefront looks fine, because looking fine is the symptom.

Checkout keeps refusing carts that never answered a gate, so orders do not simply start flowing. What you get instead is the worst of both: shoppers browsing ungated and then being stopped at the last step, with no gate to send them back to.

So treat a theme publish as a step that requires this one afterward, every time.

The order that avoids a gap

Do not publish first and fix it after. An unpublished theme can have the app embed enabled and saved before it goes live:

1. Open Customize on the new, unpublished theme from Online Store → Themes.
2. Enable Loman Age Verification and click Save there.
3. Publish the new theme. The gate carries straight over, with no window in between.
4. Check the live storefront in a private window and confirm the gate appears.

Step 2 is the whole trickSaving the embed on a theme that is not yet live costs nothing and means there is never a moment where your store is browsable without the gate.

After any theme change, check it

Duplicating a theme copies its app embed settings, so a duplicate of a theme that had the embed on will have it on too — but a theme duplicated before you set the app up will not, and neither will a theme installed fresh from the Theme Store.

The check takes ten seconds: open your storefront in a private window and confirm you are asked.

Still stuck?

Email [email protected] with your store's .myshopify.com domain and what you were trying to do. Most replies go out within one business day; over a weekend it can take longer.