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 it.
The current state is always shown at the top of the bar editor, along with the reason (for example, “Expired on Jun 9”), so you can tell at a glance whether a bar is showing.
Publishing and Drafts
When you create a bar, clicking Save publishes it – it goes live right away, subject to any start or end dates you set. If you are still building it and do not want it visible yet, click Save as draft instead: the bar stays hidden until you are ready.
For an existing bar, use the status card at the top of the editor – next to the status badge – to change its state:
Activate publishes the bar. If its schedule has already ended, activating clears the old end date so the bar shows again.
Deactivate moves a live bar back to Draft. Its schedule is kept, so you can reactivate it later without re-entering the dates.
Setting a Start Date
The Published at field controls when a published bar goes live. Leave it blank to go live as soon as the bar is published, or pick a future date and time – the bar stays 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.
Recurring Schedules
If you need an announcement to appear on specific days or during certain hours each week, use a recurring schedule instead. See Recurring Schedules for details.
Tip: For time-sensitive promotions, combine a start/end date with a countdown timer. The countdown ticks down to your expiry date, and the bar disappears automatically when it reaches zero.