Split takes one Shopify product with many variants and makes a separate product out of each value, then groups them back together as a listing so shoppers still switch between them with swatches. It is the opposite of combining, and it is how you get a product page, a URL and its own photos for every colour you sell.
When to split
A product is near Shopify’s 100-variant limit
You want each colour to have its own page, images and search ranking
Each colour needs its own inventory, or its own price
A jacket in 5 colours and 4 sizes is 20 variants on one product. Splitting by Colour gives you 5 products, each still carrying its 4 sizes, and a listing that ties them together with a Colour swatch.
How to split
Open Listings and choose Split a product
Pick the product
Choose which option to split by — Colour, Size, or whichever the product has
Read the preview: it lists every product that will be created, its price, and how many variants sit behind it
Press the button to create them
Nothing is written to your store until that last step.
What carries over, and what does not
Copied to each new product — the description, vendor, product type and tags from the original, the price, and the barcode. A SKU is copied only when exactly one variant became that product; where several did, there is no single SKU to use.
Not copied — inventory. New products start with none.
Where several variants sit behind one product, only the cheapest price carries over. Splitting a Colour option on a product that also has sizes leaves those sizes behind each new product, and they keep their own prices once you review them in Shopify.
Everything arrives as a draft
The new products are created as drafts, and so is the listing that groups them. Nothing reaches your storefront until you publish it, which gives you room to set inventory and check the prices first.
Before you split
Splitting creates real products and there is no undo — removing them again means deleting each one in Shopify. The preview exists so you can check the count and the titles before anything is created. A product with 100 or more variants is read up to that limit in one pass; anything beyond it is not included.