Reporting & research on Shopify and ecommerce
Merchants search for a sticky add to cart toggle in Dawn because Horizon has one, but the actual Dawn section files carry no such setting, and knowing which files exist changes what a fix can realistically do.
A merchant types “shopify dawn sticky add to cart” because they saw the feature somewhere else and assumed every current Shopify theme has some flavor of it. Dawn does not. The confusion comes from Horizon, a separate Shopify theme that does carry a sticky toggle, and the two themes get mixed up in forum threads and app store reviews until people start hunting for a setting inside Dawn that was never written into its code.
The two files that actually govern Dawn’s cart experience are sections/main-cart-footer.liquid and sections/main-cart-items.liquid. Both were checked at commit 258f00f in the Shopify/dawn repository, dated 2026-08-10. The footer section has 3 settings and 3 block types. The settings are color_scheme, a padding_top range running 0 to 100 in steps of 4px, and a padding_bottom range with the same 0 to 100, step 4px shape. The items section also has 3 settings, and they are the identical trio: color_scheme, padding_top, padding_bottom. Neither file mentions position, fixed, sticky, or anything resembling a stick-to-viewport behavior. That is not a gap in documentation, it is the full settings schema as it exists in the commit checked. If a theme’s schema has no field for a behavior, the theme admin has no checkbox for it, full stop.
Horizon’s sections/product-information.liquid is the file that actually carries enable_sticky_add_to_cart, and it sits among 9 settings and 2 block types in the file, checked at commit 8b42ace in Shopify/horizon, dated 2026-08-31. The other 8 settings in that same file are content_width (a select with 2 options), desktop_media_position (also 2 options), equal_columns and limit_details_width (both checkboxes), and a gap range from 0 to 48 in steps of 4px. This tells you where Shopify’s own theme team decided stickiness belongs: not in the cart footer, not in the cart items list, but in the product page section that governs how product media and details sit next to each other. A merchant trying to port sticky behavior into Dawn by editing the cart footer is editing the wrong layer of the page entirely.
| File | Settings | Block types | Notable fields |
|---|---|---|---|
Dawn sections/main-cart-footer.liquid | 3 | 3 | color_scheme, padding_top 0–100/4px, padding_bottom 0–100/4px |
Dawn sections/main-cart-items.liquid | 3 | none listed | color_scheme, padding_top 0–100/4px, padding_bottom 0–100/4px |
Horizon sections/product-information.liquid | 9 | 2 | enable_sticky_add_to_cart, content_width, desktop_media_position, gap 0–48/4px |
Horizon sections/main-cart.liquid | 5 | 9 | section_width, background_color, text_color, padding-block-start/end 0–100/1px |
Horizon blocks/add-to-cart.liquid | 4 | none listed | style_class (3 options), custom_button_background/text/border |
Horizon blocks/_cart-products.liquid | 14 | none listed | gap 8–36/4px, image_ratio (3 options), dividers, vendor, input_style |
Horizon’s sections/main-cart.liquid has 5 settings and 9 block types, and the settings include section_width, background_color, text_color, and two padding ranges named padding-block-start and padding-block-end, both running 0 to 100 in steps of 1px, a finer step than Dawn’s 4px padding controls. The block file blocks/_cart-products.liquid carries 14 settings on its own, more than either Dawn cart file’s total, including a gap range from 8 to 36 in steps of 4px, an image_ratio select with 3 variants, and checkboxes for dividers and vendor. The add-to-cart block itself, blocks/add-to-cart.liquid, has only 4 settings: style_class with 3 variants, and three color fields for button background, text, and border. None of those 4 touch stickiness, since that logic lives one file up, in the product information section’s checkbox.
Method: the numbers below come from a market aggregate of 329 themes checked on themescout.co on 2026-09-04, plus a separate July 2026 CrUX dataset measuring real visitor sessions, not lab runs. Median theme price across the market is $300, with a range from $100 to $500. Median rating sits at 4.53 out of 5 across 308 themes, and the median review count is 23. Core Web Vitals pass rates matter here because adding a sticky button through custom code touches layout stability, and layout stability is one of the metrics Core Web Vitals scores. On mobile, among 247 themes with enough data, the median share of visits passing all Core Web Vitals is 85.5%, the best theme in the market reaches 98.6%, and the worst reaches only 46.1%. On desktop, among 199 themes with sufficient data, the median is 86.2%, the best is 99.2%, and the worst is 30.3%. Anyone editing Dawn to bolt on sticky behavior is adding to a theme that starts from this baseline, and should re-check real visitor pass rates after shipping the change rather than trust a single test run.
The honest options are narrow given what the code shows. First, add custom CSS and a small script targeting the existing cart footer markup, since sections/main-cart-footer.liquid’s 3 settings won’t do it but the underlying HTML can still be positioned with position: sticky in a theme edit, done outside the settings schema entirely. Second, switch to Horizon for the product page if sticky add to cart on the product page (not the cart page) is the actual goal, since enable_sticky_add_to_cart is a native checkbox there with no code required. Third, treat any theme in the general market, UTD’s themes included (browse UTD’s listings), as a candidate only after checking its actual settings files the way this article checked Dawn’s and Horizon’s, because a theme store screenshot showing a sticky button proves nothing about which section file the setting lives in or whether it exists at all.
Anyone chasing sticky add to cart in Dawn should stop editing the cart footer and either add custom code to the existing markup or move the feature request to the product page, where Horizon already ships it as a checkbox. Check the settings file yourself before assuming any theme, including one of UTD’s, has a toggle that a screenshot only implies.
No. The two Dawn files that govern the cart area, sections/main-cart-footer.liquid and sections/main-cart-items.liquid, each expose exactly 3 settings, and all of them are color_scheme, padding_top, or padding_bottom. There is no sticky, no position, no fixed toggle anywhere in either file as of Shopify/dawn@258f00f, commit 2026-08-10. If a merchant wants that behavior in Dawn they have to add custom code, because the theme's own settings schema does not offer it.
Horizon does. Its sections/product-information.liquid file carries 9 settings and 2 block types, and one of those settings is literally named enable_sticky_add_to_cart, a checkbox. That same file also controls content_width, desktop_media_position, equal_columns, limit_details_width, and a gap range from 0 to 48 in steps of 4px. This is measured from Shopify/horizon@8b42ace, commit 2026-08-31.
There is no measurement here that isolates a sticky-button script's effect on Core Web Vitals, so nobody can say for certain. What is known is the market context: among 247 themes with enough mobile data, the median share of visits passing all Core Web Vitals is 85.5%, the best theme reaches 98.6%, and the worst sits at 46.1%. On desktop, across 199 themes with sufficient data, the median is 86.2%, the best is 99.2%, and the worst is 30.3%. Any custom script added to Dawn should be checked against real visitor data after launch, not assumed safe.
Yes. sections/main-cart.liquid in Horizon has 5 settings and 9 block types, including section_width, background_color, text_color, and two padding ranges, padding-block-start and padding-block-end, both running 0 to 100 in steps of 1px. The block blocks/_cart-products.liquid adds 14 settings of its own, among them a gap range from 8 to 36 in steps of 4px, an image_ratio select with 3 options, and checkboxes for dividers and vendor display.
blocks/add-to-cart.liquid has 4 settings: style_class, a select with 3 variants, plus custom_button_background, custom_button_text, and custom_button_border, all color settings. None of these 4 settings touch stickiness directly, that lives one level up in the enable_sticky_add_to_cart checkbox on the product information section.