How to Hide Out of Stock Products on Shopify (3 Methods)
If you run a Shopify store, you know the frustration: a customer lands on your collection page, gets excited about a product, clicks through — and discovers it’s out of stock. That’s a lost sale and a bad experience.
So how do you hide out-of-stock products on Shopify? There are several approaches, each with trade-offs. Let’s walk through them.
Why You Shouldn’t Just Leave Out-of-Stock Products at the Top
Before we dive into solutions, let’s understand the problem. When out-of-stock products sit at the top of your collection pages:
- Customers bounce. Shoppers who see unavailable items first assume your store is poorly maintained.
- Conversion rates drop. Every click on an out-of-stock product is a wasted opportunity.
- Your brand looks neglected. A collection full of “Sold Out” badges doesn’t inspire confidence.
The good news? You have options.
Method 1: Manually Hide Products in Shopify Admin
The simplest approach is to manually set out-of-stock products to “Draft” status in your Shopify admin.
How to do it:
- Go to Products in your Shopify admin
- Find the out-of-stock product
- Change its status from Active to Draft
Pros:
- No apps or code required
- Complete control over which products are hidden
Cons:
- Extremely time-consuming if you have hundreds of products
- You need to remember to re-publish products when they’re back in stock
- You lose the product’s SEO value while it’s in draft (the URL returns a 404)
- Doesn’t scale — impractical for stores with frequent inventory changes
This method works if you have a small catalog with rare stock changes. For everyone else, it’s unsustainable.
Method 2: Use Shopify’s Built-In Collection Sorting
Shopify offers several automatic collection sorting options, including “Best Selling” and “Price: Low to High.” Unfortunately, none of Shopify’s default sort options account for inventory status.
You can create an automated collection with the condition “Inventory stock is greater than 0,” but this completely removes out-of-stock products from the collection — which hurts your SEO.
The problem with removing products entirely:
- The product URLs within that collection context disappear
- Internal linking structure breaks
- Customers can’t see that you carry the product (just that it’s temporarily unavailable)
- You lose the opportunity to capture “notify me” sign-ups
What you really want is to push out-of-stock items to the bottom — not remove them entirely.
Method 3: Automate with Pushy (Recommended)
Pushy is a Shopify app built specifically for this problem. It automatically pushes out-of-stock products to the bottom of your collection pages and restores them to their original position when they’re back in stock.
How it works:
- Install Pushy from the Shopify App Store
- Select which collections to manage
- Toggle auto-push on
That’s it. Pushy monitors your inventory 24/7 and re-sorts your collections automatically.
Why this approach is better:
- SEO-safe. Products stay on the page — they’re just moved to the bottom. No broken URLs, no lost rankings.
- Fully automatic. No manual work. Products move back up when restocked.
- No theme changes. Pushy works at the collection level, so you don’t need to edit any Liquid code.
- Instant. Changes happen within minutes of inventory updates.
Which Method Should You Choose?
| Method | Best For | SEO Impact | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual Draft | Tiny catalogs (under 20 products) | Negative (404s) | High |
| Collection Conditions | Simple stores | Negative (removes products) | Medium |
| Pushy App | All store sizes | None (preserves URLs) | Minimal |
For most Shopify merchants, automating the process with Pushy is the best approach. It saves time, protects your SEO, and ensures your customers always see in-stock products first.
Get Started
Ready to stop losing sales to out-of-stock products? Install Pushy for free and automate your collection sorting today.