In the Summer ‘23 Edition, we introduced admin action extensions and admin block extensions. Together, these admin UI extensions provide developers with entirely new ways to integrate your apps into the key pages of the Shopify admin to deliver more seamless app experiences for merchants.

We’re excited to announce that admin action extensions are now generally available and can be deployed as part of your app. Admin action extensions enable apps to create transactional workflows that appear as modals on Orders, Products, and Customers pages of the Shopify admin. By giving merchants access to key functionality from your app without having to switch context, you can greatly improve your app’s usability, leading to improved merchant satisfaction and retention.

Building admin action extensions

Both embedded and non-embedded apps can create, develop, and deploy admin action extensions using the Shopify CLI. We’ve built admin actions with a flexible interface, so the only limit is your imagination.

You can use admin action extensions to create quick actions for merchants, gather additional information about the current resource, and run complex multi-step workflows.

We’re rolling out a limited number of pages that support action extensions to start, but will be adding most pages of the Shopify admin in the near future.

Deploying admin action extensions

Once you’ve built and deployed your admin action extension, merchants can find it in the “More actions” menu at the top of the targeted page. Actions are shown as modals on top of the page, enabling merchants to quickly interact with your app and return to their previous task without having to wait for the full app to load, which is often a slow process.

Admin action extensions will automatically match the Shopify admin's look and feel, giving merchants a familiar and consistent experience.

An image of a shopcode being created

Shopify-backed performance

To ensure performance, Admin action extensions can make API calls directly to the GraphQL Admin API endpoints with direct API access. This eliminates the need to proxy the calls through your app’s backend, reducing latency and improving performance. Shopify will automatically manage authenticating the requests, so all you need to do is provide the query.

Get started today

To get started building admin action extensions, visit our developer documentation and API reference for admin UI extensions. We’ve got everything you need to start building including overviews on extensible surface areas, API references, tutorials, and more.

Aaron Springut