How to Enable and Set Up Essential Cart Drawer

Getting Started: Turn On Your Cart Drawer

Essential Cart Drawer replaces your store's cart with a slide-out drawer that opens right where the customer is shopping — no jump to a separate /cart  page. They can review items, apply a discount, see upsells, and check out without losing their place.

This guide gets the drawer live and explains what to do if it doesn't appear.

Two steps to go live

The drawer needs both of these before customers see it. Missing either one is the most common reason a new install "doesn't work".

Step 1: Publish in the app

1. Open Essential Cart Drawer in your Shopify admin.
2. Open your cart drawer configuration.
3. Click Publish (top right).

Step 2: Enable the app embed in your theme

1. In Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes.
2. Click Customize on your active theme.
3. In the left sidebar, click App embeds.
4. Turn on Essential Cart Drawer.
5. Click Save.

The drawer is now live. From now on, when a customer clicks Add to cart, the drawer slides open instead of the page reloading or redirecting to the cart page.

"Open on add to cart"

In the Settings tab there's an Open on add to cart toggle.

• On (default) — the drawer opens automatically every time a customer adds a product.
• Off — the drawer only opens when the customer clicks your cart icon. Adds happen quietly in the background.

It still redirects to the cart page

If clicking Add to cart sends customers to /cart  instead of opening the drawer, the app couldn't intercept your theme's cart button. This is almost always one of two things:

1. The app embed isn't enabled — recheck Step 2 above.
2. Your theme uses a non-standard Add-to-cart button — the app can't recognise it automatically.

For case 2, point the app at the right button:

1. Open the Settings tab in the app.
2. Scroll to the Advanced section.
3. In Custom cart button selector, enter the CSS selector for your theme's add-to-cart / cart icon button (for example .header__cart , #cart-icon-bubble ).
4. Save and test on your storefront.

Not sure what selector to use? Send us your store URL and we'll find it for you.

Two carts are showing

If your theme's own cart drawer opens alongside ours — or the old cart slides in behind ours — the theme's native drawer isn't being hidden.

1. Open the Settings tab → Advanced section.
2. In Custom drawer hide selector, enter the CSS selector for your theme's built-in cart drawer so the app can hide it.
3. Save and test.

If you're unsure of the selector, contact support with your store URL.

Saving your changes

Whenever you edit settings, a save bar appears at the top of the screen. Click Save to apply your changes, or Discard to undo unsaved edits. Some changes also require Publish to push them live to customers.