Schedule a theme switch with Theme Launcher

Theme Launcher publishes a theme from your Shopify theme library at the date and time you choose, and can switch to a second theme when your event ends. Use it to launch a sale theme on time and switch back without doing it by hand.

What Theme Launcher does

Theme Launcher only changes which theme is live, and shows shoppers nothing by itself. Your Atomato messages keep running on whichever theme is live, as long as the app embed is on in it. To time your messages to the same event, see Schedule a campaign to start and end (Scale and above).

Theme Launcher itself is on every plan. On the Free plan, which the app also calls Starter, you can't save a Theme Launcher campaign while a different one is between its start and end times.

Before you start

• Get the event theme ready in Shopify under Online Store > Themes. It can stay unpublished until the switch.
• Turn on the Atomato app embed in the event theme too. App embeds are saved per theme and Theme Launcher doesn't check them, so without it your bell and messages disappear after the switch. Click Customize next to the theme, open App embeds, switch on Atomato and click Save. See Turn on the Atomato app embed.
• If you placed the bell with Add using snippet, paste the snippet into the event theme's header as well.

Schedule the switch

In Atomato, click Create Campaign in the sidebar. Below the goals, under Store tools, click Schedule a store update.

1. Enter a Campaign name. Shoppers never see it. It must be unique and can use letters, numbers, spaces, parentheses, hyphens and underscores.
2. Under During event, choose the theme to publish. Your live theme is marked (active). Reload Atomato if a theme you just added in Shopify is missing.
3. Set the Start date and Start time. Times are on the hour. If you pick an hour that has passed, saving shows Date must be in future.
4. To switch back automatically, tick Enable theme switching once the event has ended. Choose the After event theme, usually your everyday theme, and set the End date and End time. It must differ from the During event theme. Without an end date, the campaign still saves but never switches back.
5. Click Save campaign.

The campaign appears under Campaigns as Scheduled. Saving always schedules the switch, even if the status button at the top of the editor shows Draft. Times are in the time zone of the device you schedule from, not your store's time zone.

What happens at the scheduled time

At the start time, Atomato publishes the During event theme.

• Without an end, the campaign is marked Completed straight away.
• With an end, the campaign is Active during the event. At the end time, Atomato publishes the After event theme and marks the campaign Completed.

There's no email when a switch works. If Shopify can't publish a theme, Atomato emails every address turned on in Settings > Email notifications, whatever boxes you ticked there. The status changes either way, so check Online Store > Themes after each switch. See Choose who gets Atomato email notifications.

Change or cancel a switch

To change a switch, click Edit next to the campaign in Campaigns, change the themes or times, and save to reschedule it. Before the switch, keep the start time ahead: the editor only checks this for new campaigns, and a start time that has passed never runs.

During the event, you can still change the After event theme or move the end time, as long as the new end time is still ahead. The campaign then shows as Scheduled until the end time.

To cancel a switch, point to Edit next to the campaign, click Remove and confirm with Delete campaign.

Don't use Pause campaign: it only appears during an event and doesn't reliably stop the switch back. If you delete during the event, the switch back won't happen, so publish your everyday theme yourself in Shopify. See Pause, end, duplicate or delete a campaign.