Scheduling Announcements
Scheduling lets you prepare announcement bars ahead of time and have them automatically go live and expire on specific dates. This is useful for planned promotions, holiday campaigns, or any time-sensitive message where you want hands-off control over when visitors see your bar.
Announcement States
Every announcement bar is in one of four states:
Live – The bar is currently visible to visitors. The published date is in the past (or now) and it has not expired.
Scheduled – The bar has a published date set in the future. It will automatically go live when that date arrives.
Expired – The bar’s expiry date has passed. It is no longer shown to visitors.
Draft – The bar has not been published. It stays hidden until you publish or schedule it.
Setting a Start Date
The Published at field controls when the bar goes live. You can set this in two ways:
Publish immediately – Leave the default or click Publish. The bar goes live right away.
Schedule for later – Pick a future date and time. The bar remains in the Scheduled state until that moment, then automatically switches to Live.
Setting an End Date
The Expires at field controls when the bar automatically deactivates.
Set an expiry date to have the bar stop showing after a specific date and time.
Leave it blank if you want the bar to stay live indefinitely (until you manually deactivate it).
Once the expiry date passes, the bar moves to the Expired state and is no longer visible.
Timezones
All dates and times are displayed according to your account’s timezone setting. This is the same timezone configured in your Shopify admin. When scheduling bars, make sure your timezone is set correctly so your bars go live and expire at the times you expect.
Combining Scheduling with Countdown Timers
If your announcement uses the Countdown Timer type, the countdown automatically uses the Expires at date as its target. This means:
The countdown ticks down toward the expiry date.
When the expiry date passes, the countdown reaches zero and the bar deactivates (or shows your expired message if configured).
This makes it easy to run a sale with a live countdown – set the expiry to your sale end time and both the countdown and the bar’s visibility are handled automatically.
Tips
Prepare campaigns early. Create and schedule bars days or weeks before they need to go live.
Use expiry dates for promotions. Avoid forgetting to turn off a sale bar by setting an automatic end date.
Preview before scheduling. Check how your bar looks on your storefront before the scheduled date. Draft and Scheduled bars can still be previewed.
Stack scheduled bars. You can have multiple bars scheduled for different date ranges. Only bars in the Live state are shown to visitors.