Shopify is constantly evolving, with exciting new features being introduced to our platform on the regular. And with this pace of change, it’s more important than ever to stay up-to-date as a Shopify app developer. Many of these updates can open up exciting opportunities for you to extend further into merchant workflows and help them be even more successful.

However, other updates may disrupt the functionality of your existing apps. As we introduce features to our platform, we do everything that we can to ensure that we cause as little disruption as possible for our app developers—but in some cases, we may need to introduce breaking changes. It’s always our goal to give you a fair timeline to address these changes, but being well informed at the onset helps ensure you can ship quickly, limit downtime, and maintain positive relationships with your users.

"Being well informed helps ensure you can ship quickly, limit downtime, and maintain positive relationships with your users."

To help you know where to go for first-hand information on updates, we’re sharing the five top ways to stay informed of any important changes to the Shopify platform.

Build apps for Shopify merchants

Whether you want to build apps for the Shopify App Store, offer private app development services, or are looking for ways to grow your user base, the Shopify Partner Program will set you up for success. Join for free and access educational resources, developer preview environments, and recurring revenue share opportunities.

Sign up

1. Monitor our new Developer Changelog

We’re excited to announce our new Developer Changelog, which will serve as the source of truth for all important changes to our APIs and other developer products.

To help you narrow down on the specific types of changes you’d like to know about, we’ve added the ability to filter through the updates using tags. These tags cover everything from API-specific updates, to new developer previews, to deprecations, and more.

The Developer Changelog comes with some other helpful features. It highlights which changes are considered breaking and require your attention and action. A new section in the changelog allows you to track scheduled changes if you missed the original announcement. And the ability to follow the changelog’s RSS feed lets you incorporate it into your own daily workflows.

The new Developer Changelog should be your first stop to stay in the know as an app developer.

Explore the new Developer Changelog, and sign up to get updates by email, so all the latest changes are sent right to your inbox.

2. Set up your technical contact information

If your app experiences an outage or is subject to a breaking change, then we want to resolve the issue with you as quickly as possible—especially if it affects a significant number of your users.

By updating your partner account or private app email information with an emergency contact, you give us a way to reach someone from your team, so we can resolve the issue quickly and ensure that your app continues to function properly for your users.

Setting up your emergency developer contact details is easy, and can save you headaches down the road. Learn more about updating your contact information in our developer documentation.

3. Keep up with Shopify’s Web Design and Development Blog

Regularly checking Shopify’s Web Design and Development Blog is a great way to stay up to date with major launches, releases, and best practices in the Shopify ecosystem.

In particular, the Developer Digest series will help you keep on top of all the happenings in the Shopify app developer world, including changes to the Shopify App Store, new API betas, major deprecations, developer products, events, best practices, and more. Subscribe via the link in the sidebar to make sure you don’t miss a post.

You might also like: Developer Digest: November 30, 2018.

4. Make some noise in the developer forums

Although the Developer Changelog is the best way to monitor changes to our platform, the developer forums in Shopify Community are a great place to ask technical questions and share comments with other app developers and Shopify engineers.

Network with your peers, share your expertise, and get tips and tricks from experienced developers by visiting our forums.

5. Follow our @ShopifyDevs Twitter

Follow @ShopifyDevs on Twitter and turn on mobile notifications from the profile page to have Shopify’s developer product updates pushed straight to your mobile device.

You might also like: The Shopify Partner Business Philosophy: Community Over Competition.

Stay in the know

Staying informed about changes to our APIs and other developer products is important for those developing on the platform, and can be critical to maintaining your apps. We hope that you can leverage these channels to stay in the loop with all things Shopify.

Happy developing!

Sign up as a Shopify app developer

Join the Shopify Partner Program and power the world's entrepreneurs. When you sign up, you'll get a free API key, so you can build for 600,000 businesses transforming the world of commerce.

Sign up today

Jordan Liddle