Text placeholders

Text placeholders are the slots customers type into. A name on a jersey, a date on a card, one bold word on a mug — whatever your product needs.

Adding a text element#

1. Open the template in the builder and pick the Text tool in the tool rail.
2. Under Add your text elements, click + (Add text element). A new element drops onto the canvas.
3. Drag it into place and resize it by the corner handles. The box defines where the customer's text can sit — tight if the artwork demands precision, generous if you want to give them room to play.

A template can carry up to 10 text elements. Drag the tiles under Add your text elements to change their order in the customizer.

Naming the element and its hint text#

Open Text Element Settings in the inspector:

• Text Element Name — the label the customer sees above the field, and the default name of the property on the order line. "Name", "Date", "Back message".
• Placeholder text — the hint shown before they type. "Your name" beats "Enter text" by a mile. If the hint signals the kind of input you want ("Max 12 characters"), customers self-correct before they start.
• Character limit — a hard cap (default 20). The field stops at the limit. Set it on products where overflow breaks the print: thin name patches, narrow sleeves, small cards.
• Order property name — optional. When you show text to customers on the cart line (see Line item properties), this is the label used. Defaults to the element name.

Letting customers move and resize#

Position locked decides whether the customer can drag and resize the text.

• On → the text sits exactly where you placed it, sized as you set it. Right for templates that need precision (signage, jersey numbers). With Hide border you can also hide the selection outline so the slot reads as part of the artwork.
• Off → the customer can drag, scale and rotate the text within the canvas. Right for templates where personalisation should feel hands-on (cards, gifts).

Three more switches hide individual controls from the customer's toolbar while leaving the text movable:

• Lock font size — hides the font size controls.
• Lock text alignment — hides the horizontal alignment controls.
• Lock vertical alignment — hides the vertical alignment controls.

Auto-scale text#

Auto-scale text keeps the text on one line and shrinks it to fit the box as the customer types. Use it for slots with a fixed width — a name across a chest, a number on a back. It can't be combined with SVG icons.

Fonts#

Fonts live in your Design Assets library; each text element picks which of them the customer can choose from. In the Fonts section click Manage fonts → to open the fonts panel:

• Google fonts tab — search the Google catalogue and tick a family to link it.
• My custom fonts tab — your own font files. Add a custom font takes a name and the URL of a font file uploaded to Shopify Files.

Link one font and the customer sees no font picker — the text simply uses it. Link several and they get a picker. Full walkthrough, licensing notes and the "Font failed" fixes: Fonts.

Colours#

Same pattern. In the Colours section click Manage text colours (the Manage colours → button) and tick the swatches this element offers — each colour has a name and a hex code, and you can add new ones from the panel. Name them how your shoppers think about them: "Black", "Charcoal", "Brick red".

Link one colour and the picker disappears. Useful when your brand palette is non-negotiable.

Allow custom colour adds a free-form colour picker beside your swatches, so the customer can pick any hex colour. Leave it off when the print process limits the palette.

SVG icons#

Text elements can carry icons — a heart before a name, a star after a number. They're vectors, which suits embroidery, engraving and other single-colour printing.

1. In the SVG icons section switch on Enable SVG icons.
2. Click + Add icon placement. Each placement has an Icon placement (Top, Bottom, Left, Right or Inline with text), a Maximum icons count, and sizing — Match icon size to text, or a fixed Icon size (px) — plus Icon spacing (px).
3. Choose the icons: Use the Lucide library gives customers the whole Lucide set (1500+ icons) to search; Manage SVG icons → links icons from your own library, including SVGs you upload.

Icons render in the preview and the print file, and ride along on the order as a line-item property so fulfilment knows what was chosen.

Border and shadow#

For impact text — varsity numbers, signage, anything that needs to read against a busy background — open Advanced Text Styling:

• Text case — None, UPPERCASE or lowercase, applied to whatever the customer types.
• Letter spacing and Line height.
• Text Border — set a Border colour and Border width. Renders in the preview and the print file.
• Text Shadow — switch on Enable shadow, then set Shadow colour, Blur, Offset X and Offset Y.

They compose. Border + shadow is the classic jersey treatment. These are styling decisions you make for the customer — they can't change them.

Alignment and size in the canvas#

Select a text element on the canvas and a small toolbar appears under it with Text alignment (left, centre, right), Vertical alignment (top, middle, bottom) and Font size (8–200 px). These set the starting values; the lock switches above decide whether the customer can change them.

What customers can't type#

Emoji, right-to-left scripts and some unusual symbols aren't supported in print rendering. The customizer warns the customer as they type ("Heads up — emojis are currently not supported…") and the characters don't reach the print file. You'll see the same warning in the builder if you type them into Placeholder text.

What customers see#

The Text Areas section of the customizer shows the controls you've enabled — a font picker if you linked more than one font, colour swatches if you linked more than one colour (plus the custom colour picker if you allowed it), icon pickers for each placement, and the alignment and size controls you haven't locked. Border, shadow, case and spacing render but aren't customer-controllable.

If Word Art is on for the template, the same section also offers AI lettering styles that generate a graphic from the customer's text.

What's next#

• Fonts — adding Google and custom fonts, and fixing "Font failed".
• Line item properties — how the text the customer typed reaches the order.
• Brand & language — the font picker's appearance and every Text tab label.