If something isn't working as expected, this page lists the most common things to check.
Tabs aren't showing up on the storefront
By far the most common cause: the Tabs+ Setup app embed isn't enabled on your live theme.
In Shopify, go to Online Store → Themes and click Customize on your live theme.
Open the App embeds panel (puzzle-piece icon in the left sidebar).
Make sure Tabs+ Setup is toggled on.
Click Save.
If the embed is on but tabs still aren't showing, the next likely cause is that Tabs+ can't find the right place on the page to inject them. This depends on your theme.
Tabs are appearing in the wrong place
Tabs+ tries to find your product description automatically, using a list of common CSS selectors. If your theme is non-standard, the description it finds might not be the one you wanted.
Two ways to fix:
Option 1: Use the Product tabs theme block
Add the dedicated Product tabs block to your product template, in the exact location you want tabs to appear. See Theme app extension overview.
Option 2: Specify a custom CSS selector
If you (or your developer) know the CSS selector for your product description, set it explicitly:
In the theme editor, open the Tabs+ Setup app embed settings.
Scroll to Advanced settings.
In Description CSS selector, enter the selector. For example:
.product-block-list__item--description .rte.Save.
You can do the same for the title (Title CSS selector) if variant title swaps aren't appearing in the right place.
The tabs work, but the design clashes with my theme
Tabs+ ships with default styling that's intentionally minimal, but every theme is different. A few things to try:
Switch the Theme color scheme setting between Light and Dark to match your background.
Adjust Border width, Border style, and Border opacity to fit your theme's aesthetic.
Set a custom Font size and Font weight if the labels look out of place.
Use Custom CSS to fine-tune anything else. Tabs+ exposes CSS variables prefixed with
--pdpo-that you can override.
Common custom CSS examples:
/* Change icon colour */
:root { --pdpo-icon-color: #c0392b; } /* Tighten the spacing between tabs */ .pdpo__details { margin: 0; } /* Make the tab labels uppercase and bolder */
.pdpo__tab__label, .pdpo__summary__label { text-transform: uppercase; font-weight: 700; }
If the default styling is fighting your theme too much, you can turn it off entirely in Advanced settings → Include default CSS styling and write your own.
The animation feels janky or laggy
Try shorter Open and Close animation duration values (e.g. 100-150 ms).
Try the Linear easing if you're seeing odd timing.
If your tabs contain very heavy content (lots of high-res images, embedded videos, third-party widgets), the slowdown may be the content itself, not the animation. Consider lazy-loading images or moving heavy content into a separate tab.
As a last resort, turn off Animate vertical tabs for an instant open/close.
I get a “content too large” error when saving a tab
Tab content is stored in Shopify metafields, which have a maximum size. If you're seeing this error:
Avoid embedding large images as base64 inside the tab content. Upload images to Shopify's Files area and link to them instead.
Trim down very long pieces of HTML.
If you're hitting this regularly, contact us - we can help find a solution.
I changed a shared tab but the storefront hasn't updated
Updates can take a few seconds to propagate. Wait a moment and refresh the storefront page.
Make sure the change was actually saved - the “Saved” toast appears on the shared-tab edit page.
Storefront caching can occasionally hold an old version. Hard-refresh (Cmd-Shift-R / Ctrl-Shift-R) to bypass it.
If a CDN sits in front of your storefront, that may delay updates further.
The variant content isn't switching when I change variant
Confirm the variant in question actually has custom content saved (open it in Tabs+ and look at the “Variant content” card).
Make sure the variant is the one being selected on the storefront. Tabs+ listens to the product form's variant input - if your theme uses a non-standard variant selector, it may not trigger the update.
If your theme has a custom variant-selection mechanism, contact us so we can confirm compatibility.
Drafts are auto-saving but I can't see them on the storefront
Drafts are not visible on the public storefront - only published content is. To preview a draft:
Open the product in the Tabs+ admin.
From the action menu, click View → View in Theme editor.
The theme editor's preview includes draft content (it appends ?tabs_preview=1 to the URL, which switches Tabs+ into preview mode).
Still stuck?
Please get in touch with us. The faster we can debug, the more useful these things are:
Your store URL (the
.myshopify.comdomain).A link to the product page where the issue is happening.
The name of the theme you're using.
A short description of what's happening, what you expected to happen, and any error messages you see.