Image Gallery is built around three pieces that work together: galleries, your image library, and the theme block. Once you understand how they fit, adding new galleries to your storefront takes a couple of minutes.
The Three Building Blocks
Galleries - A gallery is a named set of images with a layout (Grid, Masonry, Mosaic, Collage, or Carousel), an image order, and its own images-per-row counts for desktop and mobile. You build all of that on one page in the app. Each gallery has a unique Gallery ID (for example,
gal_abc123).Image Library - Every image you upload is saved to a shared library. The same image can appear in many galleries without uploading it twice, which keeps your storage usage low and your titles and alt text consistent.
Theme Block - The block is what renders a gallery on your storefront. You add it to any page through the Shopify theme editor and tell it which gallery to show by pasting in the Gallery ID. It adds page-level polish — spacing, captions, the lightbox — on top of the gallery’s own layout.
A Typical Workflow
Most merchants follow the same path the first time:
Create a gallery - From the dashboard, click Create Gallery, give it a title, and drop your images straight into the create screen.
Arrange it - On the gallery page, pick a layout and how many images sit in a row, drag images into the order you want, and watch the canvas re-flow as you go.
Save - One Save commits the settings and any new images together.
Install to theme - Click Install to Theme, copy the Gallery ID, and open the theme editor.
Add the block - The theme editor opens with the Image Gallery block ready to drop in. Paste the Gallery ID into its settings and save.
Why It’s Designed This Way
The split between galleries (managed in the app) and blocks (placed in the theme) means your storefront doesn’t have to change every time you swap an image. How the gallery looks is decided in the app, against your real images, so the preview you approve is what ships. Update the gallery — new images, a different layout, a new order — and every page using its Gallery ID picks up the change. Need the same gallery on five pages? Add the block five times; they all stay in sync.