Theme development, Module 1, lesson 3, 8 min

Boot the dev server

From

Sarah Okonkwo

Lead Developer

Monday, 9:18am

Day one. Boot the dev server.

Hi you, I'm Sarah, lead dev. Welcome to Northwind.

The theme is cloned and the terminal on your right is ready. Start the dev server so you can see your work in the browser. One command does it all.

Sarah

How this works

A .liquid file on your laptop can't reach the browser on its own. The Shopify CLI bridges them. shopify theme dev syncs your files to a hidden dev theme and watches the folder. Save a file, the browser updates in about a second.

shopify theme dev never touches the live theme. The deploy command is shopify theme push, which comes later.

dev previews. push deploys. If you can't say which one you're about to run and why, don't run it.

Why this matters in production

You'll run `shopify theme dev` more than you'll run any other command this entire career. It's the loop: edit a file, save, watch the browser update. Every working Shopify dev knows this one cold.