Visibility control, until now limited to the product level, can finally be set at a granularity like "hide only the red S" or "publish only the bulk B2B size to the wholesale channel"—with no need to delete variants or create duplicate products.
To pull off "hide just one size," you needed stopgap measures like deleting variants or creating duplicate products—and you'd lose the inventory history.
You can "hide" a variant from the storefront while keeping both the variant and its history, and vary which combinations show per channel/catalog.
Toggle the published status on each variant row from the standard product editor.
Open a single variant to fine-tune its published status per channel.
Edit many variants at once. Toggling on/off in bulk by size or color becomes practical.
| What you want to do | Old makeshift fix | Variant Publishing |
|---|---|---|
| Hide only specific sizes | Delete Delete the variant (history is lost too) | Unpublish Hide it while keeping the history |
| Pre-launch staging | Draft product You had no choice but to set the whole product to draft | Create as unpublished Register only the new variants ahead of time as unpublished |
| Region-specific variants | Duplicate product Duplicate the product per country to split markets | Publish by catalog Limit plug types and the like to the relevant market only |
| B2B-only large sizes | Separate product Create a separate wholesale SKU as its own product | Publish to the B2B catalog only Manage it all within a single product |
| Make limited items online-exclusive | Inventory separation Location inventory allocation required | Channel selection Publish to Online Store only |
Create new variants in an unpublished state ahead of time, then switch them to published on the release date.
Hide discontinued variants from the storefront while keeping the variant itself and its history in the admin.
Publish variants that can only be sold by region, such as plug types, to the relevant markets only.
Offer bulk-quantity variants to B2B customers only, separating B2C and B2B within the same product.
Choose from one of three entry points: product details, variant details, or the bulk editor.
Specify where you're toggling visibility (e.g., Online Store or a B2B catalog).
Remove it from sale within the selected scope. You can revert later—it's not a deletion.
Where previously only Product.publishedOnChannel effectively mattered, it's best to think of this as adding a per-variant visibility layer.
This isn't just about splitting sales channels—it also applies to B2B catalogs and per-market catalogs, making it easier to design different assortments across multiple B2B accounts.
Variant IDs, inventory, sales, and links to existing orders all stay intact—a safe design that doesn't break reporting or returns processing.
Migrating existing duplicate products over to Variant Publishing can also be done in the bulk UI—no need to navigate one item at a time.
The text specifies only the three UI surfaces: product details, variant details, and the bulk editor.API names and field names, how it appears in the Storefront API, and change detection via webhooks are not documented. Ingesting this into connected apps, PIMs, and OMSs must be verified against the official reference.