There are times when you need your store to behave normally without protection getting in the way — taking your own product screenshots, letting a designer or developer work on your theme, recording a demo, or testing how a page behaves. Photolock can be turned off temporarily without uninstalling the app, so all of your settings stay exactly as you left them and protection returns the moment you switch it back on.
Turn Protection Off
Photolock runs through an app embed in your theme. Toggling that embed off pauses every protection feature at once:
Go to Online Store > Themes in your Shopify admin
Click Customize on your active theme
Click App embeds (the puzzle piece icon in the left sidebar)
Toggle PhotolockOff
Click Save
Protection stops immediately across your entire storefront. Your feature settings, rules, and watermark configuration are untouched — nothing is deleted.
Turn Protection Back On
When you’re done, re-enable the embed:
Return to Online Store > Themes > Customize
Click App embeds
Toggle PhotolockOn
Click Save
All of your previous settings take effect again right away.
Disable on a Single Page Instead
If you only need protection off for specific pages — rather than the whole store — leave the app embed on and use exclusion rules instead:
Page Filtering - Exclude individual products or collections from protection
Customer Rules - Skip protection for logged-in or tagged customers
Market Filter - Limit protection to specific markets
This keeps the rest of your store protected while making an exception where you need it. Rules require the Premium plan.
A Few Things to Know
The theme editor already disables protection - Photolock is automatically off inside the Shopify theme customizer, so you can edit your theme without turning the embed off
No need to uninstall - Toggling the embed is faster than uninstalling and preserves all your settings
Changes are instant - There’s no delay; protection follows the embed toggle as soon as you save