Sibling product swatches

Product pages

The Sibling products feature lets you set up variants as individual products with their own images and product details. Sibling products appear as variant swatches that link to separate product pages.

Customers will see product details only for the selected variant; when shown in collections, sibling products will appear as individual products.

After setting up sibling products, you can choose display either product images or custom colors for the swatches.

Unlike Variant swatches, Sibling swatches will not appear on collection pages or product listings. All sibling products will appear as individual products. Sibling swatches display on product pages only as links to other sibling products.

Watch video tutorial

The tutorial video below uses the Spark theme as an example—be sure to replace any instances of 'Spark' with 'spark' in the settings.

Set up sibling products

To set up sibling products you will need to add individual products to a new collection, then add and update two metafields for each sibling product.

  • Create products with unique images and details

  • Add products to a collection to group together as 'siblings'

  • Create two metafields to show siblings as swatches and add option names to products

1. Add individual products to siblings collection

To create a group of sibling products, you need to add individual products and add them to a new collection. The collection is used to group your sibling products together as variant options.

STEPS

In your Shopify admin:

  1. Click Products in the side panel. Click Add product to create the individual products for your siblings collection.

    We recommend using the same product title that includes the different option names (eg. color). For example: "Shoes - Green", "Shoes - Blue", etc.

    Tip: Create the first product then duplicate it to keep them consistent and save time from having to re-write and set up the details for each product.

  2. Go to Products > Collections to Create collection. Add your products to the collection to group them together as "siblings".

    You can name your collection anything you like.

    Note: By default, your sibling collection will appear on the Collections List page. To hide the sibling collection from the collection list page, you can choose selected collections to display in the theme editor.

  3. Click Save.

2. Set up metafields for sibling products

Once your sibling products are added to a collection, you need to add two metafields to your products.

Sibling products use metafields to (a) display sibling products as swatches and (b) give each product a variant option name.

Metafields are custom fields added to your products in the Shopify admin. The steps below will cover all you need to know, but if you'd like to learn more, see Shopify's guide to metafields ↗.

2a. Define metafield for siblings collection

Go to Settings > Custom data to create the first metafield for your Products. This metafield will be used to display sibling products as swatches.

The metafield requires the following fields:

Name

Siblings collection

Namespace and key

spark.siblings_collection Must be exact to work. Note that 'siblings' is plural with an 's'. Do not add or modify words.

Type

Collection (Reference)

If you are creating multiple sibling collections, you only need to create one metafield.

STEPS

In your Shopify admin:

  1. Go to Settings > Custom data. Click Products.

  2. Click Add definition button in the top-right.

  3. Enter "Siblings collection" in the Name field. Note that "Siblings" is plural.

    The Namespace and key field will automatically update to custom.siblings_collection

  4. In the Namespace and key field, replace the word "custom" with "stiletto".

    The Namespace should now be stiletto.siblings_collection. This namespace must match exactly or the siblings swatches will not work.

    Do not add additional words or multiple metafields for different sibling collections.

  1. Click + Select content type and select Collection under Reference.

  2. Click Save.

2b. Define metafield for sibling option name

Go to Settings > Custom data to create the second metafield for your Products. This metafield will be used to give individual products a variant option name (e.g. "Red" or "Wood").

The metafield requires the following fields:

Name

Sibling option name

Namespace and key

spark.sibling_option_name Must be exact to work. Note that 'sibling' is singular with no 's'. Do not add or modify words.

Type

Single line text

STEPS

In your Shopify admin:

  1. Go to Settings > Custom data. Click Products.

  2. Click Add definition button in the top-right.

  3. Enter "Sibling option name" in the Name field. Note that "Sibling" in the name is singular and not plural.

    The Namespace and key field will automatically update to custom.sibling_option_name

  4. In the Namespace and key field, replace the word "custom" with "stiletto".

    The Namespace should now read as spark.sibling_option_name. Note that "sibling" is singular, not plural. This namespace must match exactly or the siblings swatches will not work.

  1. Click + Select content type and select Single line text.

    This field will be used to label each sibling product with an option name (e.g. "Red" or "Wood").

  1. Click Save.

3. Update metafields for each sibling product

After creating the 2 metafields, go to Products in your Shopify admin to add content to the metafields.

  • Select the related sibling collection

  • Enter an option name for the sibling product

That's it! the sibling product swatches will now automatically display on the product pages.

STEPS

In your Shopify admin:

  1. Click Products in the side panel and open the products in your sibling collection.

  2. Click the Siblings collection metafield and select the collection with your sibling products.

  3. Click the Sibling option name metafield and enter text for the swatch label.

    The option name will appear as a label above the swatch. It is also used to display custom swatch colors when product images are not enabled

  4. Update these metafields for each product. Click Save.

Change option label

In the theme editor, you can change the Option label and Swatch style in the product template. Click Variant selector under Product overview to find the Sibling product swatches settings.

Show product swatch image or custom color

By default, Product sibling swatches display the first product image. Instead of product images, you can choose to display swatch colors.

In the Theme settings, you can override the default colors and assign custom colors to swatches by adding a hex code color (eg. #00b300).

To find the hex code for the color you want, you can use a HTML color picker like this one. When you choose your color, select and copy the six-character hex code, including the hashtag symbol.

STEPS

In your theme editor (Customize):

  1. Go to your Product template and click Variant selector under Product overview

  2. Under Product sibling swatches, uncheck the Show product image option.

  3. Click to open the Theme settings and open the Product tab.

  4. In the Custom swatch colors field add the exact Option name used for your sibling product (ex. "Green") followed by a colon and your hex code color (ex. #00b300).

    The Option name should match the name you entered in the "Sibling option name" metafield for your product.

  5. Click Save.

Hide sibling collections

By default, all published collections appear on the Collections list page and in Search results. Follow the steps below to hide sibling collections on your store.

Hide from collections list page

To hide a sibling collection from the Collections list page, you can choose to show only selected collections, instead of all collections.

STEPS

In your theme editor (Customize):

  1. Use the template selector to open the Collections list template.

  2. Click to open the Collections list section in the side panel.

  3. Under Select collections to show, choose Custom list.

  4. Click Select collections and choose only those collections that you want to show.

  5. Click Save.

Hide from search results

While Shopify doesn't provide an option to hide collections, you can use metafields as a workaround to remove specific collections from search results.

STEPS

From your Shopify admin:

  1. Go to Settings > Custom Data > Collections > Add definition.

  2. Enter Hide collection in the Name field.

  3. Enter seo.hidden in the Namespace and key field.

  4. Click (+) Select type and select Integer.

  5. Make sure that One value is selected.

  6. Click Save.

Return to your Shopify admin:

  1. Go to Products > Collections and select the collection you want to hide.

  2. Scroll down to the Metafields area.

  3. Enter the number 1 in the Hide collection metafield.

  4. Click Save.

Add a collection metafield with a seo.hidden key.
Enter 1 in the hide collection metafield.

Related links

Product pages Variant swatches

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