A Developer’s Perspective On Shopify Summer Edition 2025: New Tools, Better Experiences

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With the release of the Shopify Summer Edition 2025, codenamed horizons, the ecommerce platform continues to its mission to empower businesses through cutting-edge technology. But beyond the 150+ new features for merchants, this edition offers a treasure trove of opportunities and enhancements specifically for Shopify developers.

Developers are constantly looking for new tools that will reduce development time and streamline deployment, enabling them to build better-performing, more flexible experiences. Shopify Horizons delivers exactly that.

In addition to these updates, Horizon includes a fun racing game called Horizon Drive, which is sure to be a viral hit.

First, we’ll examine Shopify Editions and then move on to a quick recap, with some detail on the new updates.

What is Shopify Editions?

Shopify launches its Editions twice a year, unveiling major updates, new features, and enhancements to the platform. These updates, released in both summer and winter, are designed to empower merchants, developers, and partners by providing clear visibility into what’s new and how to leverage it for growth.

As a Shopify Plus Partner, you gain exclusive access to advanced features and tools that give your business a significant edge. This partnership means you can implement cutting-edge updates more seamlessly, helping you push the boundaries of innovation. Whether you’re looking to implement more creative solutions or take on bold customization for your online store, being a Shopify Plus Partner provides the resources and expertise to turn ambitious ideas into reality.

If you're ready to explore these exciting updates and take your store to the next level, just send us a query through the contact section, and we’ll help you navigate these new possibility

Let's see the updates

1. Horizon Design Foundation

Shopify has included 10 new themes; they are all built withthemes blocks built i,n which means the user can make edits to the existing themes with the theme editor. This is a very feasible feature for those who don't have developer experience and for those who have new stores.

2. Sidekick

Sidekick - Shopify's AI assistant. Powered by the latest advancements, sidekick can generate images, generate content, reference and answer direct questions about your store setting and configuration, create reports, suggest marketing plans, and much more. Sidekick now speaks in 20 languages. Available on the Mobile App. You can also voice chat and share screen in Sidekick.

3. Retail- Redesigned Shopify POS

Redesigned Shopify POS include Custom brading for POS where your customer can display screen with logo, colors and media. An exclusive POS pro update where a customer ships and carryout in one checkout.

4. Checkout

Checkout just got better — faster, more flexible, and secure!

Pages now load up to 2 seconds quicker. You can enjoy flat shipping rates even when orders come from different locations. Plus, customers can buy physical products right inside Roblox’s virtual world.

Apple Pay now works with subscriptions and custom checkouts. There’s also a new carbon-neutral shipping option and smarter AI-powered fraud protection.

5. Go Global

Go Global in terms of payments. Shopify payments are now launched in 16 countries.

Selling across multiple entities with Shopify Payments is exclusively available for Shopify Plus and Shopify Enterprise Commerce plans. With Shopify Payments, you can easily manage sales from multiple entities within one store, whether online or through Shopify POS. This feature helps streamline operations, allows for international expansion, and simplifies order and payout management, all from one place.

You can create sub markets for your target audience, such as customizing your Europe market for French buyers and tailer your experience by region.

6. Marketing made easier

One discount can be applied to products, orders and shipping. They have launched their own knowledge base app, ready to use customer segmentation and Addresses segmentation templates, customize your marketing campaign with different tools. Collabs mobile app for creators and track your campaign progress and do multiple edits in admin section.

7. Personalized Shop App

Shopify’s app is evolving into a powerful discovery and loyalty tool with real-time product recommendations, shoppable pages, customer-curated collections, store credit support, and improved tracking. It’s becoming an essential sales and retention channel for brands, enhancing mobile shopping and product discovery.

8. B2B Markets

Shopify is enhancing B2B commerce with custom catalogs, VAT validation, order limits, and gift card support for wholesale. Tighter NetSuite integration and more B2B apps make managing both retail and wholesale sales seamless, all within one platform—no more duplicate sites or workarounds.

9. Shipping, fulfillment, and operations: Simplified

Fulfillment improvements now make things faster, easier, and more scalable: print up to 250 labels at once, use barcode scanning, track more efficiently, and enjoy flat-rate shipping for multi-location orders. New carrier support, store credit refunds, editable subscriptions, and Tap to Pay on mobile also add convenience. Faster fulfillment means happier customers and smoother scaling without extra staff.

10. Developer: The next-generation platform for developers.

With no-tunnel local dev, hot reload, and POS API access, developers can work faster and more efficiently. Polaris UI components are now unified, and improvements like app-owned metafiles, better Flow, and bulk data CLI management make building apps smoother. Plus, new AI-powered tools like the Hydrogen Cookbook and Shopify Catalog API help create smarter shopping experiences. Developers can now build higher-quality apps without platform limitations slowing them down.

From a Developer’s Lens: Why This Edition Stands Out

1. Less Setup, More Shipping

Previously, getting multiple dev environments up and running—especially when working across multiple Shopify plans—was a time-consuming task. Now, with unified dev stores and localhost support, we're saving hours, if not days, on every new build.

2. Real-Time Feedback Loop

With live testing on localhost and direct updates to your Hydrogen storefront, there’s no need to guess how something might look or function. Real-time syncing accelerates iteration cycles, which means we can ship faster, debug more efficiently, and respond to client needs in near real-time.

3. AI as a Partner, Not Just a Tool

The introduction of Shopify’s AI assistant is a game-changer. Writing and testing GraphQL queries or implementing Shopify Functions often require lots of trial and error. Now, with contextual AI help, the barrier to building complex logic has dropped significantly.

4. Headless Made Smarter

For developers building headless commerce experiences, Hydrogen updates and Oxygen's edge deployment capabilities mean better performance and simpler workflows. It’s now easier to offer blazing-fast, PWA-like Shopify storefronts without wrestling with third-party hosting environments.

Final Thoughts

Shopify Summer Edition 2025 isn't just another update—it's a shift in how developers interact with the platform. By simplifying workflows, enhancing tooling, and expanding customization options, Shopify has once again raised the bar for eCommerce development.

For developers like us, it means we can focus more on building memorable user experiences and less on the logistics of app or theme deployment. And for clients, it means faster rollouts, better performance, and future-proof solutions.