Shopify Sidekick app recommendations: what Shopify has said, and what you can do

What Sidekick does with apps

A merchant asks for an app by name or describes a goal, as in Shopify's own example: "Can you recommend gift card apps for my store?" Sidekick answers with standardized app cards that it builds from App Store listing content.

When it launched the feature, Shopify said guided search and comparisons in the App Store would "soon retire"; as of October 20, 2026, we found no later changelog entry giving a date. Sidekick is also harder to miss: with the Shopify admin's new look, rolling out progressively since September 15, 2026, it moved from a side panel to a floating chat at the bottom of the page.

What Shopify has said about how apps are picked

Shopify has published no formula. Here is what it has said on the record, in its changelog, its documentation and replies by its staff on the developer forum.

That achievement requires good Partner standing, an app that meets the App Store requirements, a clean uninstall for storefront apps, a limited impact on checkout speed, and the minimums of Built for Shopify: 50 net installs from active stores on paid Shopify plans, five reviews and a recent rating that Shopify does not publish. Built for Shopify covers the full status, and how App Store search ranks apps covers what Shopify has said about search, which Sidekick follows closely.

What Shopify has not said

• How much each signal weighs. Shopify has not said how Sidekick uses reviews, rating, installs or listing text, nor how it chooses three apps within a category.
• Whether ads play a role. Shopify's ads documentation lists three placements, all in the App Store (search results, category pages and the homepage), and does not mention Sidekick.
• How to measure Sidekick. As of October 20, 2026, Shopify's tracking documentation lists nine surface_type values for visits to your listing, from home and search to app_group, and none for Sidekick. The shopify_app_install event sent to Google Analytics 4 carries your app's key and the store, not where the install started, and the page does not say whether an install started in Sidekick sends it.
• How many installs Sidekick brings. Shopify has published no figure.
• How the admin's own search bar ranks apps. On September 22, 2025, Liam Griffin of Shopify wrote that it is intentionally no longer synced with App Store search and uses an expanded dataset, with no further details.

On attribution, John N of Shopify wrote on September 17, 2025 that Shopify wants to give more visibility into installs happening beyond the App Store and would share more when it could. An install made through Sidekick still counts in your Partner Dashboard like any other; what you lose is its source.

Luseri records your category rank, rating and reviews every day next to those of up to six competitors, and shows where your listing visits come from in Google Analytics 4. It cannot see inside Sidekick either: a recommendation that never brings the merchant to your listing leaves no trace there.

What developers report on Shopify's forum

These are developers' observations, not Shopify's. As of October 20, 2026, no Shopify employee had answered them.

• On April 6, 2026, a developer wrote that Sidekick keeps suggesting the same two or three apps per category, almost always those already at the top of the App Store.
• On July 4, 2026, another reported lower search volume and install rate on the Ads dashboard since March 2026 and suspected merchants were using AI to find apps, while saying he had no proof.
• In a thread opened on September 17, 2026, several developers described a drop in organic App Store traffic since around May or June 2026. On October 16, one wrote that the admin's app search offers an "Ask Sidekick" button when it finds nothing, and that in his tests Sidekick recommended the top three apps for a given keyword.

Since Shopify itself says Sidekick's results mimic App Store search, your position in App Store search for the words merchants use is the closest measure you have. Treat it as an approximation, since Sidekick personalizes its answers.

What to do, following Shopify's advice

Each step comes from Shopify's documentation or staff, and none guarantees a recommendation.

1. Enable Shopify-managed installation. Shopify then installs your app and updates its access scopes without calling your app: you declare the scopes in shopify.app.toml, and Shopify handles the merchant's approval. Apps built with Shopify CLI use it by default.
2. Make your listing accurate, clear and structured. Choose the categories and tags that match your app's core function, and fill in the structured features: up to 25 per category, which Shopify says help merchants identify and compare apps, and which you can change at any time without an appeal. Sidekick compares apps on key feature differences, although Shopify has not said which fields it reads. See every field of the listing.
3. Be available where merchants chat. List every language your app supports and add translated listings; Shopify translates English listings automatically into eight languages, and you can write your own. Geographic requirements you declare also limit which merchants can install your app, and an app unavailable in the merchant's region does not appear in Sidekick.
4. Work toward Built for Shopify, or at least the "Increased visibility on key merchant surfaces" achievement. Both depend on installs from stores on paid plans, reviews and rating.
5. Earn reviews within the rules: five reviews and a minimum recent rating are part of the thresholds, and Shopify says positive reviews raise apps in App Store search. See how to get Shopify app reviews.
6. Ask Sidekick about your app by name and about your category. On launch day, a developer showed it describing a feature his app did not have; Trisha Causley of Shopify replied that the team was looking into it and asked developers to report such issues on the developer forum.

Sidekick app extensions are a separate thing

Since June 17, 2026, every developer can build Sidekick app extensions. They let Sidekick search an installed app's data and take the merchant to the right page of the app, and the extensions_summary in shopify.app.toml tells Sidekick which questions to route to your app. They serve merchants who already have your app: Shopify has not said they change recommendations to merchants who don't. Since the same date, App Store rules require them to match the functionality stated in your listing (rule 2.2.8) and forbid using them to promote your app or related apps, or to ask for reviews (rule 2.2.9).

AI assistants outside Shopify

Merchants also ask ChatGPT or Perplexity which app to use. Neither company documents how it chooses the apps it cites, so nothing can be optimized with certainty. What is documented is which crawlers they use.

Listings are already open to them: as of October 20, 2026, the App Store's robots.txt keeps crawlers out of internal and service pages, and keeps all but four named assistants (ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Google-Agent and Perplexity-User) out of search result pages. What you control is your own website, so check that its robots.txt does not block OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot. Installs still start on Shopify (rule 2.3.1), so a merchant sent by an assistant lands on your listing; how to market a Shopify app covers measuring that channel and the others.