- Short answer
- Yes, except themes edited in Canvas: Download theme file emails a ZIP of the theme, without store content like products, pages or images.
- Where to click
- Online Store, the theme's actions menu, Download theme file; the Shopify app has the same action.
- Where it's sent
- A .zip file to the email associated with your staff login.
- Theme limit
- Basic, Grow and Advanced stores can add up to 20 themes; delete a downloaded one to free a slot.
- Unlicensed upload
- Shows "Action required: licensing issue"; you can't customize or publish it until resolved.
How do you download your Shopify theme file?
In your admin, go to Online Store, open the theme's actions menu and click Download theme file; the Shopify app has the same action. The theme is sent as a .zip file to the email associated with your staff login. Shopify's Canvas help page adds a limit: you can't download the theme files for a theme that you edited in Canvas.
Shopify gives three reasons: editing on your computer, a backup, and saving the theme for later use if you've reached the theme limit, since Basic, Grow and Advanced stores can add up to 20 themes. Deleting a theme is permanent, but a downloaded theme is safe to delete.
Developers can also use Shopify CLI's theme pull, which "Retrieves theme files from Shopify", or the GitHub integration to "sync theme code to and from GitHub repositories".
What's in the ZIP, and what isn't?
The download page draws the line:
Theme downloads don't include your store's products, collections, menus, pages, blog posts, images, or other files in Content > Files.
For theme code itself, Shopify's developer docs describe a standard directory structure, with folders such as layout, templates, sections, snippets, assets and config. Theme editor settings are unique to each theme; their saved values sit in config/settings_data.json.
To bring store content to another store, export or duplicate it there; see how to get blog posts, pages and menus out of Shopify.
Can you upload the theme to another store?
To add the theme to a store, this one later or another one, upload the downloaded .zip; Shopify asks for theme files compressed into a single ZIP file.
A Shopify Theme Store purchase is licensed exclusively to the store where the purchase was made. An unlicensed upload shows an "Action required: licensing issue" message, and you can't customize or publish it until that's resolved.
Moving a paid theme? You "might be eligible to transfer it", but one condition is closing the original store, which can't be reopened; see how a paid theme moves to a new store.
This article was written entirely by AI under human editorial direction. The editor sets the topic and structure, runs multi-stage validation on facts, links, and interactive elements, and verifies the output is useful from a business perspective. All claims are checked against official Shopify sources. Details may change — always confirm critical data at shopify.com.
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