A Locksmith Overview

Locksmith is a simple yet powerful tool to help you make sure the right people see the right things in your Shopify store. In the spirit of the name of our app - ✨ Locksmith ✨ - you'll be using "locks" to determine what content in your store is restricted and using "keys" to denote how, when, and who gets access.

Locks

Locks are created using the search bar within our Locksmith app. You can search for most resources in your store by name. More in-depth information on the in-app search bar here:

Creating locks →

A lock restricts access to something on your shop. You can lock:

• Your entire shop

• Pages

• Products

• Collections

• Prices more information here

• The shopping cart (useful for preventing checkout until a condition is met)

• The login page

• The registration page (type 'register' into the Locksmith search bar)

• Product variants

For more advanced use cases, you can also create custom Liquid locks — these let you lock content based on any condition you can express in Liquid. Create one by clicking the Start a Liquid Lock link above the Locksmith search bar.

Lock options

After selecting a resource and clicking Save, you'll see a set of options for that lock. The most commonly used ones are:

• Is the lock currently active? Toggle the lock on or off without deleting it.

• Should it also protect the products in this collection? Disabling this means only the collection page itself will be locked, not the individual product pages within it.

• Should it hide the collection, and its products, from search results and other lists?

• Should it hide links to this resource from navigation?

You'll see different options depending on what type of resource you've locked. There are also additional options available under the Advanced section, including manual locking mode more on that here.

Keys

A key permits access to the locked resource based on your criteria. Keys are created on the lock page using the "+ Add key" button.

Keys allow you to specify the exact conditions that give your customers access to the locked resource. There are over 20 built-in key conditions to choose from. You can also create your own custom Liquid keys by choosing custom Liquid from the keys menu.

More information on creating keys here:

Creating keys →

Combining conditions: OR versus AND

Locksmith gives you the flexibility to add multiple keys and logically combine them to create unique access scenarios.

OR — Add another separate key to your lock by clicking Add Another Key. Keys connected by OR can individually open your lock, regardless of whether the other keys' conditions are met. A customer only needs to satisfy one condition to gain access.

You can tell you're looking at OR keys because there are multiple key symbols, each preceded by "Permit if the customer..." text.

AND — Add another condition to the same key by clicking + add key condition below an existing condition. When conditions are connected by AND, all of them must be met before access is granted.

You can tell you're looking at AND conditions because there is only one key symbol, with each condition inset beneath it.

Combining key conditions →

Inverting keys

All key conditions can be inverted — meaning Locksmith will check for the opposite of the original condition. To invert a key, click the "invert" box in the upper right of the key.

For example, using inversion on a location key gives you: Permit if the customer is not visiting from the United States.

Inverting conditions in Locksmith →

Other useful settings

The "force open other locks" setting

If you have several locks covering overlapping content (e.g. locked collections that share some of the same products), you may want to enable the "force open other locks" setting on a key. This tells Locksmith to grant access to all content covered by the current lock, even if other locks might otherwise apply.

Using the "Force open other locks" setting →

Cart and checkout validation

Locksmith also has a checkout validation feature, which lets you create a rule ensuring that products with a specific product tag can only be purchased by customers with a specific customer tag — without modifying the checkout UI itself.

Setting up checkout validation with Locksmith →

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Questions?

Feel free to reach out at any time. You can contact us via email at [email protected].