Last updated on 27th April 2026

Creating a custom Shopify app

In order to connect your Shopify store with DeployHQ, you'll need admin access to your store and a custom app that provides an Admin API access token for DeployHQ to use.

As of 1st January 2026, Shopify retired the legacy "Develop apps" flow inside the store admin. New custom apps now need to be created through the Shopify Dev Dashboard. If you already have a legacy custom app, it will continue to work — skip to the Using an existing legacy app section below.

Creating a new app via the Dev Dashboard

1. Open the Dev Dashboard

Head to dev.shopify.com/dashboard, or from your Shopify admin click your store name in the top-right and choose Dev Dashboard.

2. Create the app

In the left-hand sidebar, go to Apps and click Create app in the top-right. Choose Start from Dev Dashboard, give the app a descriptive name (for example, "DeployHQ Theme Deploy"), and click Create.

3. Configure Admin API scopes

Open the app and go to the Versions tab. Fill in any required fields — if you don't have a custom admin UI, you can leave the App URL as the default https://shopify.dev/apps/default-app-home. Pick a Webhooks API version.

Under Access scopes, add the following two scopes:

  • read_themes
  • write_themes

Save the version.

4. Set the distribution to Custom

Go to the Distribution tab and select Custom distribution.

Custom distribution is the right choice for a single-store integration like DeployHQ. Do not pick Public — that's for listing apps on the Shopify App Store, and the distribution method cannot be changed after it has been set.

Enter your store domain (for example, your-store.myshopify.com) and click Generate link to produce an install URL.

5. Install the app on your store

Open the generated install link in a browser that's signed in to your Shopify admin, and click Install to install the app on your store.

6. Retrieve the Admin API access token

Back in the Dev Dashboard, open the app's API credentials (or Settings) page for the installed store. Copy the Admin API access token — it will start with shpat_. This is the token DeployHQ needs.

7. Paste the token into DeployHQ

Return to DeployHQ, pick a server name, choose Shopify as the server protocol, and paste the shpat_ token into the API Access Token field along with your store domain.

That's it — you'll now have a server that DeployHQ can read from and write to.

Using an existing legacy app

If you created a custom app before 1st January 2026, it will still appear under Apps → App and sales channel settings → Develop apps → Legacy custom apps in your Shopify admin, and it continues to work.

To pull a token from it:

  1. Open the legacy app from that screen
  2. Go to the API credentials tab
  3. Under Admin API access token, click Reveal token once (or reinstall the app if it has never been installed)
  4. Under Configuration, check that the Admin API scopes include read_themes and write_themes
  5. Paste the token into the API Access Token field on your DeployHQ Shopify server

A note on Theme Access app passwords

The password generated by Shopify's Theme Access app is a separate credential type, intended for the Shopify CLI and Theme Kit. It is not an Admin API access token and cannot be used in the DeployHQ API Access Token field — you'll need a token from a custom app, as described above.