Appearance
Recently Viewed
The products a visitor has already looked at, on your store, brought back to them as they browse.
The trail lives in the visitor's own browser and nowhere else. No cookie, no account, no app, and nothing about it reaches your store or you. The section says so out loud — a quiet line beside the heading — and offers a Clear control that empties it on the spot.
Try it
←Recently viewed
4
Visitors only ever see products they viewed themselves. That history is kept in their own browser, never on your store.
Storefront preview
Recently viewed
Saved only in this browser
Press Clear to see what a visitor sees when they empty their own trail. Nothing here is stored, and nothing about it ever reaches the store.
How it works
What is stored, and where
When someone opens a product page, the theme writes that product's handle and the time into their browser's local storage, under a key that belongs to this theme. It keeps the last 20 and forgets the rest. That is the entire record: a short list of product handles and timestamps, on their device.
Nothing is sent anywhere. There is no visitor profile on your store, no tracking cookie and no third-party service involved, which is also why the trail does not follow anyone from their phone to their laptop — it is not the same browser, so it is not the same list.
The line and the Clear control
Beside the heading the section prints a short note saying the list is saved only in that browser, and a Clear button next to it. Pressing Clear empties this list immediately — no confirmation dialog, because the data is the visitor's own and browsing anything starts it again. Their other saved preferences in the theme are untouched.
Screen-reader users are told the list has been cleared, and keyboard focus stays where the rail was rather than jumping to the top of the page.
Both the note and the button are translated into all 50 of the theme's languages. You don't configure either of them: they are what makes this section honest, so they are always on.
When it appears — and when it doesn't
The section is hidden until the visitor has actually viewed something, so a first-time visitor never meets an empty band. It stays hidden if the products in the list can no longer be shown, and the product a visitor is currently looking at is left out of their own rail.
In the theme editor you see the section either way, with a one-line reminder when there is nothing to show — otherwise a section you had just added would look broken.
The cards
Each card is the theme's own product card, rendered by your store and fetched one product at a time, so the trail carries the same badges, swatches and pricing as every other product grid on your storefront. A product that has been deleted or unpublished simply drops out of the rail.
Where it goes
The section ships on your product pages, and again on your 404 page, where it helps somebody who has landed on a broken link get back to what they were looking at. (The 404 copy is switched on with Show recently viewed products in the 404 section.)
You can also add it to any other page from Add section in the theme editor — it hides itself when there is nothing to show, so it is safe anywhere.
Settings
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Color scheme | Which of your theme's colour schemes the section uses. |
| Heading | The title above the row. Clear it and no heading is shown. |
| Maximum products to show | How many cards the rail shows, from 2 to 10. The browser still remembers the last 20; this is only how many are on screen. |
| Columns | Cards per row on tablet and desktop — 2, 3 or 4. Phones fit as many as the width allows. |
| Show secondary image on hover | Swaps to the product's second photo when a visitor hovers a card. |
| Show vendor | Shows the product's vendor on each card. |
| Show price | Shows the price on each card. |
This section has no blocks — its contents are the visitor's own history.
Accessibility
The heading is a real second-level heading, so the rail is a landmark a screen-reader user can jump to. Clear is a real button with a 44 × 44 pixel target, it is reachable and operable from the keyboard, and it is marked by an underline as well as by colour. While the cards are loading the grid is announced as busy, and nothing on the rail animates.