I'm the founder of MiniScript Labs. I've spent the last eight years building on Shopify, a lot of it with enterprise clients in the US. CherryPatch is something different for me: a one-person project, built on my own, for a problem I've watched cost people time over and over.
The problem nobody warns you about
You spend weeks getting your theme right. The homepage banners, the product page layout, the announcement bar, all the little settings that make the store feel like yours.
Then you update the theme, or switch to a new one. And none of it comes along.
So you're stuck doing one of two things: re-entering every setting by hand in the new theme, or just staying on the old version because redoing all that work isn't worth it. Neither is a good answer.
There's a quieter version of the same problem that bites bigger stores. You duplicate your live theme to build a redesign for a sale. While you work on it, the live theme keeps getting small fixes — a new section here, a price tweak there. When the redesign is finally ready and you publish it, those live changes get wiped out, because the copy you've been editing never knew about them.
I've seen both of these happen to careful, capable people. The tools weren't the problem. The workflow was.
What I wanted instead
I wanted to put two themes next to each other, see exactly what's different, and move only the pieces I care about — without copying JSON by hand and without gambling on my live store. And if I made a mistake, I wanted to undo it in one click.
That's CherryPatch.
How it works
You pick two themes: one to copy changes from, and one to apply changes to. CherryPatch clearly marks which theme will be modified, and warns you loudly when that's your live store.
From there you have three ways to work, depending on how technical you want to get:
- Copy sections — for anyone. You see a page's sections by name ("Image banner", "Featured collection") right next to a live preview, and you tick the ones you want in the other theme. No code, no JSON.
- JSON diff — for developers and power users. A side-by-side diff of every change, where you check exactly which differences to apply and which to skip.
- Visual preview — load both storefronts side by side to compare them with your own eyes.
The part I care about most is the safety. Before CherryPatch writes anything, it makes a timestamped backup of the file. Writing to a live theme takes an extra, deliberate confirmation. And every change is logged in a merge history, so you can restore any file to how it was before — a merge can always be undone.
Being honest about what it does (and doesn't)
CherryPatch works with your theme's settings and sections — the structured part of a theme (its JSON). That covers the things merchants change most: banners, section content, layout choices, settings. It does not merge custom Liquid or CSS edits, because that's a genuinely hard problem and I'd rather do one thing well than half-do two.
It's also version one. Today it moves one file at a time and matches sections by their ID. Multi-file merges and smarter section matching are the next things on my list. I'd rather ship something solid and honest now and improve it with real feedback than over-promise.
Why I built it solo
I don't have a team behind this. I built CherryPatch myself, evenings and weekends, because the problem kept nagging at me and I had enough Shopify experience to know it could be solved cleanly. There's something good about a small tool made by one person who actually uses it — every decision in CherryPatch is one I'd want as a merchant or a developer supporting one.
Try it
CherryPatch is on the Shopify App Store now, $4.99 a month with a 14-day free trial. The honest way to try it: duplicate your live theme, make a few changes in the copy, then use CherryPatch to move them back — completely risk-free, since you're working on a duplicate.
If you run into something or have an idea, I read every message: miniscriptlabs@gmail.com.
Thanks for reading — and for trusting a one-person app with your store. I don't take it lightly.