Help

Getting started

Sub-second Search adds instant, as-you-type search to your Shopify store. Results are grouped by collections and products, helping customers find what they’re looking for faster.

After installing, visit the app dashboard to run your first index. This fetches all your products and collections and builds a search index.

Visit Settings to customise how search results appear on your store. You can choose between two display modes, control which fields are shown, and set up exclusions.

Display modes

The default display mode is List mode. Search results appear in a dropdown overlay below your store’s search box. Collections are shown first, followed by products.

Explosion mode is a visual, full-screen overlay experience. When a customer searches, product images animate outward from the centre in concentric circles. Products from the same collection are clustered together.

Search behaviour

Search works progressively — results appear from the first character typed and refine with each additional character. Results animate smoothly as they appear, change priority, or disappear.

Product titles are given the highest priority, followed by vendor names, tags, and descriptions. Collections always appear above products in the results.

Settings reference

Result fields — Control which information appears for each product in the results: title, price, vendor, and description.

Exclusions — You can exclude specific products by tag (e.g., enter a tag name to hide all products with that tag from search results). You can also exclude collections by adding specific text to their description.

Overlay z-index — If your theme’s elements (like sticky headers or menus) appear on top of search results, enable the “Raise overlay z-index” option.

Troubleshooting

No results appearing — Make sure you’ve run the initial index from the dashboard. If you’ve recently added products, click “Reindex now” to update the search index.

Results are outdated — The search index updates automatically when products or collections are created, updated, or deleted. You can also manually reindex from the dashboard.