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Filter Menu
Filter Menu Overview - Start here!
Filter Menu Overview - Start here!

Learn how the Filter Menu works and the steps to follow after adding the app to your store.

Brad Rees avatar
Written by Brad Rees
Updated over a week ago

The Power Tools Filter Menu provides an easy way to create and manage a filtering type of menu, where customers can select from multiple criteria to filter your store's products down to easily find what they are looking for.

By default, Shopify provides Storefront filtering, which allows merchants to create filters based on a number of product data points, however this method does not support filtering by collections and tags, which is the basis for how the Power Tools Filter Menu works. The Filter Menu also includes many options for customising the design and behaviour of the filters on your store.

Please note: the Filter Menu is capable of updating/changing your product tags, and in some cases, the app will remove tags from your products, read why the app removes tag here.

We recommend exporting a backup of your product list before making any changes in the app, just in case the changes need to be reverted. Here is a guide from Shopify on how to export your product list.

Technical Overview

There are a few requirements for the app to function correctly that should be understood before continuing:

  • Each tag that you plan to filter on must have a corresponding collection, which only contains products with the same tag as the collection handle. The app can create these collections for you automatically.

  • Tags used for filtering need to be in the 'handle' format, which is all-lower-case-with-dashes, or underscores. No other special characters are allowed. The app has the ability to automatically convert any non-handle tags into the correct format.

  • The title of each filter option is the title of the corresponding collection.

  • The Filter Menu can only filter using AND style rules, so you cannot select multiple items such that it increases the number of products (OR style).

Luckily Power Tools will guide you through the process of ensuring everything is correct, and will even update tags and create collections as needed.

Installing the app

In order to see the filters on your storefront, you will need to update your theme. There are two types of installations available:

Theme App Extension

This the fastest method, using Shopify's app extensions available in Online Store 2.0 themes. You can enable the app in your theme editor without installing any code to the theme. The Filter Menu Theme App Extension version includes all of the same app settings as the Theme Installer version, with some new settings added for placement and filter layout. The guide below has more information on how to enable the Theme App Extension.

Theme Installer

This is the old method, if you've used our app before you may be familiar with the Theme installer. It adds the Filter Menu to your theme code, and offers more control over placement and customisation options. We have automated installers available for many themes from the Shopify theme store and third party themes.

For more information on how to use the Theme Installer, please see the following guide:

Setting up your filters

For details on how to set up your filters, please see the following guide:

Working with variants

The Variant Tagger app is included with the Filter Menu, it allows you to easily tag products with their variant options, and automatically create filters based on those tags. You can find out more about the Variant tagger in the following guides:

Tag Aliases and Merging Filters

The Filter Menu has a feature that allows you to group together specified tags for use in a single filter. You can set this up by clicking the (+) plus icon next to each filter handle/tag.

For more information on merging filters, and the alias feature, see the following guide:

Conditional Filters

The Filter Menu supports conditional filtering, only showing particular filter groups if a parent filter is selected first.

For more information on conditional filtering, and a guide on how to set up nested filters, please read the following guide:

Changing the Design of the Filter Menu

You can adjust the look and behaviour of the filter menu without editing any code or CSS. The settings are found in different sections depending on the method you installed the app.

For the Theme App Extension, you can find the settings for the app in your theme editor, general settings are found in the Filter Menu section, with additional settings in the "App Embeds" section of the theme editor.

(team: update this link when the guide is live)

For the Theme Installer version of the app, the settings can be found in your theme editor, under Theme Settings -> Filter Menu.

Known issues with other apps

It has been noticed that certain apps can interfere with the Filter Menu. In some cases, this can result in your products being un-tagged and removed from their collections.

The current list of apps include:

  • Make Model Year Search - this app adds tags for each of your makes and models, so if you have over 1000 models it can cause issues with filtering.

  • Genius Collections

  • Some inventory management apps overwrite the tags (this can usually be fixed in settings though)


If you have any additional questions, please contact support through the live chat in the app, or at support@powertoolsapp.com

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