Building great Shopify apps shouldn't mean reinventing the wheel - or worse, kicking merchants out of your app experience. Today, we're excited to announce admin intents, a powerful new API that solves one of the biggest pain points facing app developers.
Fragmented merchant experiences are a problem
If you're building Shopify apps, you've likely faced these challenges:
Custom UI overhead: App developers spend countless hours building custom frontends and backends just to manage basic Shopify resources like products, customers, or collections. This means less time focusing on your app's unique value proposition and more time recreating functionality that already exists.
Workflow interruption: Even worse, merchants often get ejected from your app entirely when they need to perform core tasks. Want to update your brand settings? Sorry, you're getting redirected to Shopify admin. Need to modify a product while using your inventory app? Hope you don't mind losing your place.
These interruptions break the user experience and force merchants to juggle multiple browser tabs, losing context and momentum in their workflows.
The Solution: admin intents
We're introducing admin intents - a new API that bridges the gap between your app and Shopify's native admin experience. Admin intents works seamlessly with both embedded apps (App Home) and admin UI extensions, giving you the best of both worlds.
Think of admin intents as your direct line to Shopify's polished, native resource editors—without the context switching.
One line of code, endless possibilities
Admin intents couldn't be simpler to implement. With just a one-line API call, your app can create or edit any of these Shopify core resources:
- Products - Launch the full product editor with all variants, SEO, and media handling
- Catalogs - Manage product catalogs and their organization
- Collections - Create and modify product collections with advanced filtering
- Orders - Access comprehensive order management tools
- Customers - Edit customer profiles and manage customer data
- Metaobjects - Handle custom data structures seamlessly
- Metafields - Manage additional resource data without custom forms
- Markets - Configure market-specific settings and localization
- Discounts - Create and manage promotional campaigns
Here's what it looks like in practice:
/* Create a new Shopify collection from your app */
shopify.intent.invoke('create:shopify/Collection');
/* Launch the native product editor for a specific product */
shopify.intent.invoke('edit:shopify/Product', {
value: 'gid://shopify/Product/12345'
});
That's it. No custom forms, no complex state management, no UI inconsistencies.
Focus on what matters
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No more bespoke admin experiences: Stop rebuilding Shopify's admin interface. Admin intents gives you access to the same polished, feature-complete editors that merchants already know and love.
-
Keep merchants engaged: No more ejecting merchants from your app. They can manage core resources without losing their place in your workflow, maintaining context and momentum.
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Launch native resource editors directly: Tap into years of UX research and development that went into Shopify's admin interface. Your merchants get a consistent, familiar experience while staying within your app's context.
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Faster development cycles: Spend less time building and maintaining admin interfaces, and more time creating the unique features that differentiate your app.
Real-world impact
Imagine you're building an inventory management app. Previously, if a merchant discovered they needed to update product details, they'd have to:
- Leave your app
- Navigate to Shopify admin
- Find the product
- Make their changes
- Return to your app (if they remember)
With admin intents, that same merchant can update product details directly within your app's interface, then seamlessly return to their inventory workflow. The context never breaks.
Available today
Admin intents is available now for all Shopify app developers. Whether you're building your first app or scaling an established platform, admin intents can immediately improve your merchant experience while reducing your development overhead.
Ready to get started?
Try admin intents now and see how quickly you can enhance your app's functionality. Build faster, ship better, and most importantly - keep merchants engaged in your app where they belong.
Check out our admin intents documentation to start implementing this game-changing API today. Your merchants (and your development timeline) will thank you.
