Mowz Countdown Timer Bar

Start here: which of the two are you missing, the bar, or a timer on your product page? They render through different parts of Shopify and they fail for different reasons.

If it's the bar (top or bottom of every page)

Nine times out of ten this is one switch, and it is not broken, it is off.

Shopify keeps an “app is switched on” setting, an app embed, inside each theme, not inside the app. A newly installed app is off in your theme until you turn it on, and the app can't do it for you.

The quick way. Open Mowz Countdown Timer Bar in your Shopify admin. If the embed is off, the first screen already says so and names your live theme. Click Open theme editor, it opens with the Mowz switch already flipped for you. You still have to press Save, top right. That's the step almost everyone misses; nothing happens until it's pressed.

The manual way, if you'd rather see where it lives:

1. Shopify admin → Online Store → Themes
2. On the theme marked Live, click Customize
3. Bottom of the left panel, click App embeds
4. Find Mowz Countdown Timer Bar and switch it on
5. Save, top right

Reload your storefront. The bar appears within a few seconds.

No App embeds in that panel at all? See I can't find App embeds in my theme.

If it's a timer on your product page

That one is a block you place yourself, and the app embed above has nothing to do with it, a product-page timer appears whether or not any app embed is on. What it needs is the Mowz countdown block added to your product template. The app checks this too and tells you on the first screen. The Add the Mowz block button opens the theme editor with the block ready to drop in, and again, press Save. Full steps are in Where can I put a timer?

Then two things that apply to both

• Is the timer Published? Draft, Scheduled and Ended all render nothing. The Timers list shows the status of each one, see What do Draft, Published, Scheduled and Ended mean?
• Was it working yesterday? Then read It was working and now it's gone first; it's almost certainly a theme change.

And the one to remember for later: app embeds and blocks are per theme. Publish, duplicate or restore a theme and the new one starts without them.

First, scroll further. In the theme editor, App embeds is the last thing in the left panel, below every section in the template. It is genuinely easy to scroll past, and this is what has happened nine times out of ten.

Still nothing? Check that you are editing the theme marked Live. Older themes, the ones Shopify calls vintage themes, have App embeds too, and the bar works on them: we have checked it on Debut.

What an older theme cannot take is an app block, so a product-page timer needs an Online Store 2.0 theme. Every theme in Shopify's current theme store is Online Store 2.0, free and paid alike; we test each release on Dawn and Horizon.

Nothing is broken and nothing has been left behind. With no embed active, your storefront is the page it would be if you had never installed us: no bar, no leftover code, no gap where one would have been, nothing in your page source. Your timers stay saved in the app.

If you want to know whether that is what you are looking at, write to us with your store address and the name of your live theme, support@mowz.nl, and we'll tell you what we see rather than send you to another settings page.

Nothing has been deleted and nothing has expired. Your timers are exactly where you left them.

Almost always, a different theme is now live. Because Shopify stores the “app is switched on” setting inside each theme, a theme that gets published, a new one, a duplicate, one you restored, one your designer pushed, starts with the Mowz app switched off, even though the app itself is untouched and still configured.

The app notices this. Open the app and the first screen shows a banner naming the theme, with a button that opens the theme editor for it. Flip the switch, Save, and your bar is back with all its settings.

If no theme has changed in the last few days, tell us that, then it's something else and we'll look properly.

Two places, and they work differently.

A bar at the top or bottom of every page. This is the app embed from the first article. You choose top or bottom; it stays fixed in view and it always reserves its own space, so it never sits on top of your content. Switch the embed on once per theme and you're done.

A timer on your product pages. This one is a block you add yourself, so you decide exactly where on the page it sits, above or below the buy button, wherever suits. It does not need the app embed.

The easy way is from inside the app: in the timer's Placement step, Put the block on your product page → Add “Mowz countdown” to your product template. That opens the theme editor on a product page with the block ready to drop in. Press Save.

By hand:

1. Shopify admin → Online Store → Themes → Customize on your live theme
2. In the template dropdown at the top, choose Products → Default product
3. Add block in the section where you want it
4. Pick Mowz countdown, drag it to the right spot
5. Save

Until the block is placed, the timer is saved and simply doesn't appear, the app keeps saying so on the Timers list rather than letting you wonder.

Both placements show the same three things: your message, the live countdown, and an optional button. A product-page timer can be limited to certain products, see My product-page timer is on every product (or on none of them). The bar is every page by design.

The bar reserves its own space so it never covers your content. There is one known exception: if your theme's own header is fixed (it stays put as you scroll), it can end up underneath our top bar, because reserving space in the page doesn't move something that's floating above it.

The fix that takes ten seconds: switch the timer to bottom placement instead of top.

On phones the bar sizes itself, there's nothing for you to set, and the Mobile tab in the editor's preview shows you what a shopper gets at 390px wide, the narrowest phone we test on. If something is clipped, cut off or overlapping on your device, that's ours, not yours. Send us:

• your .myshopify.com address and your live theme's name
• the device or the browser window width
• a screenshot, by email to support@mowz.nl

We'd rather see it than guess at it.

By default a product-page timer shows on every product, which is rarely what you want. “The sale ends Friday” belongs on the sale items.

In the timer editor, the Which products card gives you three choices, and you pick one:

• Every product, the default.
• Products with a tag, one or more tags, separated by commas. A product carrying any one of them shows the timer.
• Products in a collection, one collection.

It's tags or a collection, never both.

The collection one asks for a handle, not a name. That's the last part of the collection's web address, summer-sale, not “Summer Sale”. Open the collection in your admin and copy it out of the URL. If it says “No collection with that handle”, that's what's happened.

As you type, the editor tells you how many products match, “42 products match.” Use that number. It's the fastest way to catch a tag with a typo in it (“Nothing matches yet, so the timer would not show anywhere”) or a rule that has quietly caught your whole catalogue.

If a product-page timer isn't showing on the products you expected:

• Check the match count says what you meant.
• Check the tag's spelling and case against the product itself, copy it, don't retype it.
• Check the block is placed on the template that product actually uses, a product on a custom template needs the block on that template too.

Four words, and they answer one question: is a shopper seeing this right now?

Status	What a shopper sees
Draft	Nothing. It's yours to work on. Saving is not publishing.
Published	It's the live one. Shoppers see it, assuming the app embed is on for your live theme.
Scheduled	Published, but its start is still in the future. Nothing renders until then.
Ended	Published, but its end has passed. What the shopper sees is whatever you chose as the expiry behaviour, see My sale has ended, what happens to the bar?

Scheduled and Ended are not separate things you set. They're what Published looks like before the start and after the end.

A delivery deadline is never Scheduled, and it reads Ended only after its hide-after date. See How does the Christmas deadline work, and what happens after it?

That's the rule, and it's working as intended: one timer is published at a time. Publishing a different one unpublishes the current one.

Nothing is deleted. The first timer goes back to Draft with every setting intact, and you can publish it again whenever you like. The app tells you before it happens and names both timers in the confirmation, so you should never hit this by surprise.

You can build as many timers as you like and keep them in Draft, a Black Friday one, a Cyber Monday one, a clearance one, and swap which is published.

Want to run two at once? It's on the What's next page in the app. Tap “I want this”, that's how we decide what to build. We won't tell you it's coming, because we don't promise things we haven't built.

You choose, when you build the timer. Two options, no third:

• Hide it, when the clock reaches zero the bar disappears from your storefront.
• Show an ended message, the bar stays and shows the message you wrote, e.g. “This sale has ended, thanks to everyone who shopped.”

It never shows a negative number and it never rolls over.

If you set an end date that's already in the past, the app warns you before you save: “That time has already passed.” Save it anyway and the expiry behaviour applies straight away.

A timer that resets every day never runs out, so there's nothing to choose on that one.

Wondering what is left behind on the page in either case? See What happens if I unpublish a timer, or when it ends?

Nothing you built is lost, and nothing of ours stays on the page. These are two different moments and they are worth keeping apart.

If you unpublish it

The timer goes back to being a draft and disappears from your storefront immediately. Every setting it had is still there, the message, the colours, the end time, the products it was targeting, and you can publish it again whenever you like. The app says this on the timer's own screen before you do it, so it should not be a surprise.

Publishing a different timer is an unpublish too. One timer is published at a time, so publishing a second one puts the first back to draft. See I published a different timer and my first one stopped.

And if you meant to remove it for good rather than for now: deleting cannot be undone, and the app offers you Unpublish instead at that moment. Take it if there is any chance you will want the timer back.

When the countdown reaches the end

What a shopper sees is the choice you made when you built the timer, hide it or show a message instead. That is My sale has ended, what happens to the bar?

If you chose to hide it, what is left on the page is the same as an unpublish, which is the next part.

What is left on your storefront: nothing

This is the part worth being precise about, because it is the thing you cannot see for yourself without opening the page source.

With nothing published, your page carries no bar, no styles of ours and no script of ours. Our JavaScript file is not slimmed down or left idle, it is not requested at all, so the browser never asks your shopper to download it. The space the bar reserves is released with it, so your header and your content sit exactly where they sat before.

We measure this rather than claim it. The case we test is the awkward one: the app embed still switched on in your theme, and no timer published. On that page there is no markup of ours, no style block and no request for our script. An app embed that is on has nothing to render into, so it renders nothing.

Why we can say that and mean it. The app never writes to your theme. Its Shopify permissions are read-only and it has no ability to write to a theme at all, so there is nothing of ours sitting in your theme files to go stale or to clean up. What you see on your storefront is built at the moment the page is served, from settings that live with the app. No published timer, nothing to serve.

The same holds if you remove the app entirely, see What happens to my timers if I uninstall the app?

The end date and time you set are in your store's timezone, not the timezone of the computer you're sitting at. The editor says which one it's using, under The countdown.

Your store's timezone lives in Shopify admin → Settings → General → Store defaults → Timezone. If your store was set up in another country, or you're travelling, those are two different clocks and that's usually the whole answer.

Check the store timezone first, then the timer's end time in the app.

A daily timer counts down to the same clock time every day in that same store timezone, and resets to tomorrow's occurrence once it passes.

If the store timezone is right and the countdown is still wrong, tell us the store timezone, what the app shows and what your storefront shows, that's a real one and we want it.

Short version: nothing is showing on your storefront, nothing is left behind in your theme, and your settings are kept for a short window in case you come back.

• Your storefront is clean immediately. No bar, no leftover code, no orphaned block, nothing in your page source. The page is what it would be if you'd never installed us.
• Your timers are unpublished, not deleted. Reinstall within the window and they're all still there, as Drafts, with their settings. You publish the one you want.
• Your access token and session are deleted straight away, on uninstall. The token can't be used again.
• Then Shopify tells us to delete the rest. Shopify sends us a shop-redact signal, normally 48 hours after you uninstall, and when it arrives we delete everything the app holds for your store. That's the real deletion and it isn't reversible.

We never wrote to your theme in the first place, the app's permissions are read-only and it has no ability to write to a theme at all, which is why there's nothing to clean up.

If you'd like it deleted sooner, ask and we'll do it. What we store and why, including how long we keep each thing, is on our privacy page, Tech2Change BV is the data controller, and formal requests go to info@mowz.nl (or just ask us and we'll route it).

The app is free. There is no paid tier, no trial, no usage limit and no billing of any kind in this version. Nothing in the app is locked.

What's next is a page of ideas we might build, run more than one timer at once, show the bar on some pages only, cart and checkout timers, country targeting, testing two versions. Tap I want this on the ones you want, and answer the one follow-up question honestly. It's a vote, not a shop. Nothing there is for sale and nothing is waiting behind a paywall.

We read every vote. We won't promise you a feature or a date in return, but the votes are genuinely what we build from.

The same two places as any timer, and you choose in the timer's Placement step.

On your product page it shows three lines: the deadline, the delivery window for an order placed now, and a disclaimer under both. It takes your theme's own colours and font. With the Christmas deadline as it comes, on 3 October it read:

Order by Thu 17 Dec, 14:00 for delivery before Christmas
Order now: estimated delivery Thu 8 Oct – Mon 12 Oct
Delivery dates are estimates based on our dispatch times. Carrier delays can happen.

In the bar at the top or bottom of every page it shows one line, the deadline, with the countdown inside it. See Why does the bar show only one line?

Setting it up is the same as for any timer. The bar needs the app embed switched on, step 1 of Setting up. The product page needs the Mowz countdown block on your product template, see Where can I put a timer?

A delivery deadline is a timer, and one timer is published at a time. Publishing it puts the timer that is running now back to draft, and the app names both before it happens. So in this version it is a sale countdown or a delivery deadline, and the bar or the product page, not two at once. See I published a different timer and my first one stopped.

Five causes, in the order they happen.

1. The theme step is not done

In the bar: the app embed is off in your live theme. That is My countdown bar isn't showing on my store, and it is the same switch. On the product page: the Mowz countdown block is not on your product template. For that one, the timer's Placement step checks on each page load and says so: “The Mowz block is not on your product template yet”. Either way, press Save in the theme editor; nothing happens until it is pressed.

An older theme with no app blocks has nowhere to put the product-page block at all. See I can't find App embeds in my theme.

2. It is not the published timer

Saving is not publishing. And if you published a sale timer after it, the delivery deadline went back to draft, because one timer is published at a time.

3. It has passed one of its dates

Under the Christmas deadline, from your final order date's cutoff it stops counting down and shows your closed message instead. That one is still visible. From your hide-after date it shows nothing at all, and the timer reads Ended. The timer's own screen says which is in effect, beside its status: “Counting down”, “Showing your closed message. The final order date (…) has passed”, or “Hidden. Your hide-after date (…) has passed”. See How does the Christmas deadline work?

4. On the product page: this product is not in the list

If Which products is set to a tag or a collection, a product outside it shows nothing, which is right and looks exactly like a fault. It is tags or one collection, never both, and a collection is its handle, not its name. Check the match count. This article is the whole of that one. The bar ignores product targeting and shows on every page.

5. Nobody has opened the app for about six months

The app works out your dates about six months ahead and tops them up whenever you open it. If it has not been opened for that long, the deadline stops showing rather than show a date that is wrong. Open the app once and it is back.

If all five look right

Then it's ours. Send us your store address, your live theme's name, and the page it should be on, and we'll look at the page ourselves.

No. Not from us, and not from your own carrier.

What the app shows is an estimate. It is arithmetic on the settings you gave it: your cutoff times, your processing days, your delivery days. It isn't a commitment from a carrier, and neither we nor you can see what happens to a parcel once it's collected.

That's why the product-page deadline carries a disclaimer line, and why it's yours to edit rather than ours to bury. The default reads: “Delivery dates are estimates based on our dispatch times. Carrier delays can happen.” Change the wording if you like. Keep it saying estimate.

The bar has room for one line, so it carries no disclaimer. That is why its all-year line says “for estimated delivery by”. If your delivery times vary a lot, the product page is the better place for a delivery deadline, because the small print sits right under the dates.

The part that is genuinely true is the deadline itself. “Order within 4h 12m” is a real statement about your own cutoff, and it's the bit a shopper acts on. Lead with the deadline. Keep the date as an estimate.

Almost always this is three settings doing exactly what they were told, in an order that isn't the order in your head. They're separate and they stack:

• Cutoff, in Order cutoff, day by day: the last moment an order still counts for that day. It is not when you ship. An order at 13:59 against a 14:00 cutoff counts for today; at 14:01 it counts for the next dispatch day.
• Working days to pack and hand over: full days between the cutoff and the parcel leaving you. Same-day dispatch is 0, and 0 is a valid setting. Leaving it at 1 when you ship the same day moves every date a day later than you really are.
• Then in transit for, fastest and slowest: counted from the day the parcel leaves you, not from the day the order comes in.

You don't have to take our word for it. Beside the form, What this works out to gives the answer for an order placed now, then Step by step for two orders: one placed now, and one placed just after today's cutoff, which is the one that catches people out. Days it skips are named with the reason. If a step looks wrong, the setting above it is the one to change.

The times are in your store's timezone, and the editor names it: “Times in your shop's timezone (…).” If it looks an hour out, see The countdown is showing the wrong time.

If what the app works out ever disagrees with your storefront, that's a bug and we want it today. They run the same engine.

Three settings, and they answer different questions.

The Dispatch? column in Order cutoff, day by day. Untick a day and nothing leaves you that day. Orders still come in and count for the next dispatch day, and the countdown runs to that day's cutoff. It never counts down to a day that cannot dispatch and never shows zero. A weekday you untick still counts as a working day for packing: you are at work, there is just no pickup.

Weekends decides whether Saturday and Sunday count while the app counts packing and delivery days: “Saturday and Sunday do not count as processing or delivery days”, the default, or “Saturday and Sunday count like any other day”.

Days nothing dispatches: public holidays and your own closures, one date per line, like 2026-12-25, up to 40. 25 and 26 December are filled in. On those days no parcel leaves and no packing day is counted. Delivery days still run through them, because the holiday is yours, not the carrier's.

Untick every day and the app refuses to publish: “Every day is marked not a dispatch day, so nothing can ever dispatch. Set at least one cutoff.”

Under Season you choose Christmas deadline or No season, always show the next cutoff.

The final order date

The Christmas deadline counts down to your final order date, 17 December as it comes. Beside it, Last safe order day from your own settings works out the last order that still arrives by Thu 24 Dec from your own numbers, and tells you whether your date matches, is earlier (fine, it leaves a margin) or is later. Later means an order placed on it would, by your own numbers, arrive after Christmas. You can still publish; read it first. The default is the 17th and not the 18th because, from the default settings, the 18th is too late.

Until the final order date is 14 days away, the deadline names the date and carries no countdown, because counting hours to a date weeks away is noise. Inside the final 14 days the countdown appears.

After it, in two stages

From your final order date's cutoff, the countdown stops and your closed message shows in its place. As it comes, on the product page: “Christmas orders have now closed. We are still shipping. Orders placed now arrive after Christmas.” In the bar: “Christmas orders have closed. We are still shipping.” Edit it to whatever is true of your shop.

From your hide-after date, 26 December as it comes, it shows nothing at all and no script of ours is fetched. The timer reads Ended. You set both dates under What happens after Christmas on the Placement step.

Under “No season” there is nothing to end. It counts down to your next cutoff every day, all year.

The app says it in one sentence: “The bar has room for one line. The delivery window and the small print go on a product-page delivery deadline, not in the bar.”

The line changes with the date. As it comes:

When	The bar says
Christmas, more than 14 days before the final order date	Order by {deadline_date}, {deadline_time} for Christmas delivery
Christmas, the final 14 days	Order within {countdown} for Christmas delivery
After the final order date's cutoff	Christmas orders have closed. We are still shipping.
After the hide-after date	Nothing. No bar at all.
No season, all year	Order within {countdown} for estimated delivery by {latest}

Every line is yours to edit, up to 70 characters each, so a shopper on a phone can read all of it. The countdown sits inside the line, so the clock styles do not apply; your bar's look and colours do. The bar shows on every page and ignores product targeting.

Want the delivery window and the disclaimer? Put the delivery deadline on your product page instead. One timer is published at a time, so it is one or the other.