Shopify Chat Widget Not Showing? Fix App Embed and Theme Issues

You installed a chat app. You saved the theme. You opened the storefront — and there is no chat bubble.

This is one of the most common Shopify support tickets for chat tools. The good news: it is almost always a settings or theme issue, not a broken store.

1. Confirm the App embed is ON (not just installed)

For modern Shopify apps (including Rivet Chat), the storefront widget is an App embed, not a random snippet in `theme.liquid`.

1. Shopify Admin → Online Store → Themes 2. On the live theme, click Customize 3. Open the left panel → App embeds 4. Find your chat app (for Rivet: Rivet Chat) 5. Toggle it on → Save

Installed in Apps ≠ enabled in App embeds. If the toggle is off, the bubble will never load.

2. You edited the wrong theme

Draft themes and live themes are separate. If you enabled the embed on a draft while customers browse the published theme, they will see nothing.

Fix: open Customize on the theme marked Current, enable the embed there, save.

3. Tenant / account not linked

Rivet needs a Tenant ID (your inbox) written to the shop. In the Rivet Chat Shopify app:

1. Open Setup 2. Confirm a Tenant ID is shown (Shopify Billing unlocks the inbox automatically) 3. Re-open the theme editor and save the App embed once more

If Tenant ID is empty, the embed has nothing to initialize and will stay silent.

4. Ad blockers and privacy extensions

uBlock, Brave shields, and some privacy DNS tools block third-party chat scripts. Test in a clean browser or Incognito with extensions off.

Ask a teammate on another network to check the live storefront too — your laptop may be the only machine filtering the script.

5. Hard refresh and cache

After enabling the embed, hard-refresh the storefront (`Cmd+Shift+R` / `Ctrl+Shift+R`). Shopify's theme preview and CDN can lag a minute behind a Save.

6. Console clues (2-minute check)

Open the storefront → DevTools → Console / Network:

• Look for `chat.js` or `rivet-chat.com` failing (blocked / 404)
• Look for JS errors right after page load

If the script never appears in Network, the App embed is still off or the theme was not saved.

Quick Rivet checklist

• [ ] Rivet Chat App embed enabled on the live theme
• [ ] Theme Saved after enabling
• [ ] Tenant ID present in the Shopify app Setup page
• [ ] Tested without ad blockers
• [ ] Asked: "Is [product] in stock?" once the bubble appears

Still stuck?

Use Rivet's Shopify integration guide for embed options, or start free / install from the Shopify App Store and open Setup → Open theme editor to jump straight into App embeds.

Related: Add Shopify live chat without editing theme code.