Collections list

Lists every published collection in the store, in the store's own order, with no picker, no ordering control and no limit. It is the honest index: whatever exists, appears, including the internal shelves a merchant built to drive facets. Reach for it when the point of the page is completeness and the merchant wants the whole list on one screen. Reach for collection-list instead the moment you want a chosen subset, a label under a tile that the collection name does not carry, or a count in a noun the shop actually uses.

Section settings

• Eyebrow. Small uppercase label above the heading. Use it to group sections into themes.
• Heading. Default “Collections”.
• Show product count. Off by default.
• Color scheme. Colour scheme.

Section spacing

• Top padding. 0–160px in steps of 4, default 48px.
• Bottom padding. 0–160px in steps of 4, default 48px.

Layout

• Image aspect ratio. Adapt to image · Square · Portrait · Landscape, default Square.
• Columns on desktop. 2–6, default 3.
• Columns on mobile. 1 · 2, default 2.

Blocks

None. The section renders from its own settings.

Example use cases

The catalogue index, as shipped. list-collections.json: eyebrow "The catalogue", heading "Collections", show_product_count: true, 3 columns desktop and 2 mobile, image_aspect_ratio: portrait, scheme-1, 56/56. It sits below pitch-axis, so the reader meets the frequency register first and the shelf list second, and above the picked collection-list grids that do the actual merchandising.

A contact sheet for a deeper store. Twenty shelves or more: columns_desktop: 6, image_aspect_ratio: square, show_product_count: false, padding 40/40. The tiles get small enough that the label carries the page, which is the right trade when the list is long and the covers are inconsistent.

A pre-launch audit pass. columns_desktop: 2, image_aspect_ratio: landscape, show_product_count: true, run once and then reverted. At that size every collection missing a cover image shows Shopify's grey placeholder at a scale you cannot miss, and every collection holding a single product exposes the pluralisation problem below.

Notes

• The eyebrow and the h1 are both inside the heading branch. sections/main-list-collections.liquid:12 wraps the eyebrow and the <h1> in if section.settings.heading != blank. Clear the Heading field and the collections index loses its title, its eyebrow and its only h1 in one move. collection-list fixed this by routing through snippets/section-header.liquid; this section still carries the substrate pattern.
• The count renders "1 products". sections.main_list_collections.product_count is a flat string, "{{ count }} products", with no one form, so a collection holding a single item reads wrong in every locale. Two of Timbre's eight scale shelves (E La Sirena, B Celtic Minor) hold exactly one instrument. collection-list has a count_noun_one setting for precisely this case; this section does not. Either give the locale key plural forms or leave show_product_count off.
• The tile image has no sizes attribute. sections/main-list-collections.liquid:27 emits a raw image_tag with widths up to 3200 and no sizes, so the browser assumes 100vw and can pull a 2400px file into a 380px tile. On a twenty-tile index that is most of the page's performance budget. Route it through {% render 'responsive-image' %} or add a sizes that matches the column count.
• A collection with no image and no products renders placeholder_svg_tag. probe.mjs counts .placeholder-svg and DESIGN.md names it as an anti-pattern on any shot route. Give every collection a cover, or accept grey boxes on the index.
• Adapt to image has no CSS rule behind it. There is no .main-list-collections__media--adapt, so the container gets no aspect ratio and tile heights come from the photographs. One landscape cover among eight squares gives you ragged rows. Pick a fixed ratio.
• No motion. The section renders no {% render 'motion' %} at all, so its tiles sit outside the reveal pass while pitch-axis, collection-list and listening-rail around them on the same page all move.
• No audio, deliberately. This is a list of shelves, not of objects. On the collections index the sound is above it in pitch-axis and below it in listening-rail. Do not add a player here.
• There is no exclusion setting. Automated collections, smart collections built to serve facets and any internal grouping all appear alongside the real departments. Leave the section off a store whose collection list is not entirely meant to be read.