Top Bar, Product & Cart Bars

Free Shipping Bar appears in three places on your storefront: an announcement-style bar across the top (or bottom) of the page, a compact progress bar in the cart drawer and on the cart page, and a nudge above the buy buttons on product pages. All three come from the single app embed you enabled during installation, and all three share one cart state, so a shopper who adds an item sees every bar update at the same moment. How they look is set in the theme editor; how they behave is set in the app under Bar Behaviour. Every placement is included on every plan.

What the Embed Shows

Open Online Store > Themes > Customize, click App embeds in the left sidebar, and click Free Shipping Bar to see its settings.

• Top bar — On while the embed is enabled. By default it behaves like an announcement: it shows the goal while the cart is empty, then, once the cart has items, slides in for a few seconds on each page and after each cart change with the progress or the unlocked message, and hides again. Under Settings > Bar behaviour > Top bar you can keep it on screen permanently instead, set how many seconds it stays each time it appears, and choose whether to skip the empty-cart announcement when your theme already shows one. See Bar Behaviour.
• Show in the cart and cart drawer (Automatically / Off) — On Automatically, the app looks for your theme's cart drawer and the totals area of the cart page and places a compact progress bar there. Dawn, Horizon and the many themes built on them are recognised out of the box. It refreshes every time the drawer opens or the cart changes.
• Show on product pages (Automatically / Off) — On Automatically, a one-line nudge appears above the buy buttons: "Add this item to unlock free shipping", or "$18 away from free shipping" counting the item on screen. It watches the variant selector, so the hint changes when the shopper picks a different size or colour.
• Custom CSS selector (optional) — If your theme isn't recognised and the cart bar doesn't appear, paste the CSS selector of the element inside your cart or cart drawer that the bar should be inserted into (it becomes the first thing in that element; your theme developer or the theme's support can tell you this, for example .cart__footer or #CartDrawer .drawer__footer). The product page has its own selector: the product form, or the element the bar should sit before. Leave both blank for recognised themes.

Design Settings

The embed has two colour groups so the big top bar and the small inline bars can be styled separately:

• Top bar — Position (Top overlays the top of the page, Bottom sits at the bottom, Inline top pushes the page content down so the bar never covers your header), sticky, background, text, progress track and fill colours, font size and height. Show progress bar is off by default for the top bar: an announcement reads better as one line, and the cart and product bars carry the visual progress. Turn it on if you keep the top bar set to Always.
• Inline bars — Background, text, track and fill colours for the cart and product page bars, plus their size. Show progress bar is on by default here.
• Progress style — A full bar or a slim line, for whichever bars have the progress bar turned on.
• Icon — Shows a small shipping icon before the message.
• Animation — Whether the bars and their messages transition smoothly or change instantly.

Click Save in the theme editor. Changes are live immediately.

The Theme Blocks (Optional)

Auto placement suits most themes. When you want a bar in an exact spot, the app also ships two theme app blocks that you position like any other block:

• Product page block — Place it anywhere in a product template: above the description, under the price, in a sidebar.
• Cart block — Place it in the cart page, or in a cart drawer that accepts app blocks.

Add them from Settings > Extensions in the app (Set up in Shopify opens the theme editor on the right template with the block ready to drop in), or in the theme editor by clicking Add block in a section and picking Free Shipping Bar under Apps. Each block has its own colours, size and progress style, independent of the embed.

Once a block is on a page, the embed stops placing its own bar on that page. You don't need to set Show in the cart and cart drawer or Show on product pages to Off — the block takes over automatically, and removing it hands the page back to auto placement.

Turning Placements Off

• Only the top bar — Set Show in the cart and cart drawer and Show on product pages to Off in the embed. Consider Always under Settings > Bar behaviour > Top bar so the progress stays visible.
• Only the cart and product bars — Keep the embed on and use Pages under Settings > Bar behaviour (Growth and up) to limit the top bar to the pages you choose, or its Devices setting to hide it on mobile where the inline bars carry the message.
• Nothing — Switch off Enabled under Settings > Bar behaviour, or disable the embed in the theme editor.

Which Placements to Use

• All three, as installed — Right for most stores. The product nudge catches shoppers before they add, the cart bar catches them while they review, and the top bar announces the goal to new visitors and pops in with progress after each change.
• Top bar and cart only — For stores whose product pages are already busy, or where a single item rarely crosses the goal.
• Blocks instead of auto placement — For heavily customised themes, or when the auto-placed bar lands somewhere you don't like.