Varn: Product Variants & Swatches App Is Live on the Shopify App Store!

Introduction

Varn, our variants and swatches app, is now live on the Shopify App Store. Any Shopify store can install it today, and the Starter plan is free forever.

As a Shopify agency, we’ve built a lot of ecommerce stores. And handling variants and swatches is one of the most tedious parts of the job.

Setting them up, naming every color, matching photos to each variant, and keeping it all in order across thousands of products takes far longer than it should.

That’s why we built Varn: to take that work off your plate. And it comes with a genuine free starter plan (free forever).

What Is Varn & What We Did Differently?

Varn – Variants & Swatches AI is a Shopify product variants app. It shows the right photos for each variant a shopper picks, turns variant options into color and image swatches, and groups colors listed as separate products into one set of options. AI handles most of the setup, and the Starter plan is free forever.

If you want the full picture of what’s under the hood, our How Varn Works doc walks through it end to end.

There are already plenty of variant and swatch apps on the Shopify App Store. So when we started building Varn, we didn’t want another one that works the same way.

We looked at the parts of the job that wore us out on client stores and built around those.

A. AI Does the Setup, and You Stay in Control

With a lot of apps, matching colors to photos is still on you. Varn’s AI setup reads your option names, like “Navy” or “Forest Green,” and matches them to your product photos. It only fills in what it’s confident about and never overwrites anything you’ve set up by hand. So instead of starting from scratch, you review a short list. Our AI setup guide covers exactly how that matching logic works.

B. Your Theme Stays Exactly As It Is

Varn edits zero theme files. It drives the variant picker your theme already has instead of replacing it, so there’s no code left behind. If you ever uninstall, your store looks exactly like it did before. Check our theme compatibility reference if you want to confirm your specific theme ahead of time.

C. Product Grouping on Every Plan

Shopify’s own Combined Listings app joins colors listed as separate products, but it only works on Plus and enterprise plans. We wanted every store to have that. Varn’s product grouping works on any plan, starting with 1 group on the free Starter plan.

D. A Free Plan That Stays Free

Starter is free forever, with no card needed. You get AI setup, unlimited color swatches, 1 product group, and variant images on up to 5 products. That’s enough to try Varn on your bestsellers before you pay for anything, and paid plans come with a 7-day free trial when you’re ready for more.

E. Click Analytics on Advance and Premium

Advance and Premium include swatch and variant click analytics. You can see which colors shoppers actually click on, without Varn collecting personal customer data, per our own tracking and privacy policy. It’s a simple way to spot a color gaining interest before it sells out.

G. Agent Readiness Score

More shoppers now ask AI assistants what to buy, and those assistants can only recommend products whose details they can read. Varn gives every product an agent readiness score, on every plan, showing how ready its variant and color data is for AI shopping assistants.

H. Photos That Follow the Shopper’s Choice

Shopify lets you attach an image to each variant, but many galleries still show every color’s photos at once. With Varn, when a shopper picks a variant, the gallery switches to that variant’s photos only. No more scrolling past six photos of the blue hoodie to find the green one.

I. Swatches Wherever Shoppers Browse

A lot of shopping happens before anyone opens a product page. That’s why we didn’t stop at the product page. Varn shows swatches on collection pages and search results, and in quick view, on every plan, so a shopper scrolling your collection can spot the olive jacket without clicking into the black one first.

J. A Style Studio With a Live Preview

Swatches should look like they belong on your store. In Varn’s style studio, you adjust shape, size, spacing, and labels and see the result in a live preview before anything goes live. Advance and Premium add advanced styling options when you want more control.

Varn: Shopify Product Variants & Swatches Plans and Pricing

Paid plans are billed monthly with a 7-day free trial, and you can cancel any time. Yearly billing works out about 26% cheaper. See the full breakdown, including AI credit rollover and top-ups, in our plans and pricing doc, or the complete feature matrix if you want every feature mapped to every plan side by side.

How to Get Started With Our Shopify Variants App?

You can go from install to live swatches in a few minutes. Our full quick start guide covers the same steps in more detail if you want screenshots alongside each one.

• Add Varn from the Shopify App Store. Open the Varn listing and click Install (by choosing the apt pricing plan).
• Turn Varn on for your theme. On the dashboard, click Activate, and the theme editor opens with Varn already selected. Toggle it on and click Save. Our install and activate guide also covers turning it on for an unpublished theme.
• Pick a product and run AI setup. Open Swatches, choose a product, and click One-click AI setup. Varn matches your color option values to colors for you. Check the result, change anything that looks off, and click Save.
• Preview it on your store. Click Preview on your storefront and tap a swatch. You’re checking three things: the swatches show up, the selected one has a ring around it, and the price and gallery change with it.

Tip: Working on an unpublished theme? Use the theme picker in step 3 to turn Varn on there first, so everything is ready the day you publish.

Try Varn for Free Today

Start on the free Starter plan with your five best-selling products, and see the difference for yourself. Install Varn from the Shopify App Store.

FAQs