Shopify’s latest Merchant Changelog update introduces Smart Grid tile suggestions, a feature that automatically recommends new tiles—or the removal of stale ones—based on your store’s own catalog, order history, and POS activity. For both merchants who want a smoother checkout and developers who build custom POS experiences, this change can save time, reduce errors, and keep the most profitable actions front‑and‑center.
What’s New: Smart Grid Tile Suggestions
When you add a tile in the Shopify POS “Add tile” flow—or when you edit a Smart Grid template in the POS editor—Shopify now surfaces a “Suggested tiles” panel. The system analyses which products, discounts, or custom actions your staff uses most often and proposes them as one‑click additions. Each suggestion includes a short rationale (e.g., “Most‑sold product in the last 30 days”) and lets you either add the tile, dismiss it, or ignore it for now.
Who’s Affected: Merchants vs. Developers
Merchants: The primary audience is store owners and staff who operate the POS. The suggestions appear directly in the Shopify admin POS editor and on the iOS/Android POS app, so no code changes are required. Merchants can immediately act on recommendations to streamline the checkout flow.Developers: If you’ve built custom Smart Grid templates using the POS API or JSON schema, the new suggestions still surface in the UI, but you’ll want to verify that any custom tiles you’ve coded don’t conflict with automatically suggested ones. The update does not modify the underlying API, but it adds a new “suggestion” object to the Smart Grid editor UI that you can reference when building admin extensions.
How to Access and Review Suggestions in POS
Sample Smart Grid JSON with a Suggested Tile
{
"grid_name": "checkout",
"tiles": [
{
"type": "discount",
"discount_id": "gid://shopify/Discount/1234567890"
},
// Suggested tile (added by Shopify after analysis)
{
"type": "product",
"product_id": "gid://shopify/Product/987654321",
"_suggested": true,
"_suggestion_reason": "Top‑selling product in last 30 days"
}
]
}
Best Practices for Acting on Suggestions
• Prioritise suggestions that align with your current promotions—adding a high‑volume discount tile can reduce checkout time dramatically.
• Review “remove” suggestions (tiles not used in the past year) to declutter the grid; a leaner interface leads to fewer staff mistakes.
• Test new tiles on a single POS device before rolling them out chain‑wide to ensure the layout still feels intuitive.
• If you maintain custom tiles via the POS API, add a comment flag (e.g., "_custom": true) to keep them separate from auto‑suggested items.
• Periodically revisit the suggestions panel; Shopify’s algorithm updates weekly based on fresh sales data.
Things to Watch: Dismissed Tiles and Data Privacy
Dismissed suggestions are stored in your store’s settings, so they won’t re‑appear unless usage patterns change dramatically. If you ever need to reset the suggestion list, you can delete the "_suggested" entries from the Smart Grid JSON via the admin UI.
All recommendation data stays inside your Shopify account; no external AI service accesses your catalog. This ensures compliance with GDPR and other privacy regulations.
Conclusion & Next Steps
Smart Grid tile suggestions give you a data‑driven shortcut to a faster, more accurate checkout experience. Merchants can instantly add high‑impact tiles, while developers can ensure custom integrations remain harmonious with the new UI prompts. Log into your Shopify admin today, explore the “Suggested tiles” panel, and start fine‑tuning your POS workflow for the season ahead.
