Shopify lets you associate one image with one variant, but what if you want to have multiple images associated with that variant? That's not a native Shopify feature, so most merchants turn to the app store to find a solution. With Impulse's new variant image set feature you can remove one more app from your store.

If you have a t-shirt that's available in Grey, Blue, and Burnt orange and only want to show the grey images when a user selects the grey variant, you can follow these steps. This feature is mostly geared toward color variants, but any option name will work.

In our example we'll use Color.

For example, let's start with the grey image set. Select one of your grey images and then click "Add alt text" (or "Edit alt text").

You'll use your option name from step 1 (Color) and variant name (Grey) from step 2. The syntax here is important part - one mistake and the image won't be added to the right group.

1. # (hashtag character)

2. option name (lowercase)

3. _ (underscore to separate group and variant)

4. variant-name (lowercase and hyphens instead of spaces)

If your color name as multiple words, like Burnt Orange, it would become #color_burnt-orange

An image's alt tag is typically used for both SEO and accessibility. You can still use it for those purposes (we actually recommend it) and this feature.

Anything in the alt field before the # character will be printed to the page as expected, and everything after will be used for our image set feature.

The above example will have an alt tag of "Burnt orange sweater" and will belong to the Burnt Orange image set.

You'll end up with something like this if you're using variant buttons:

Or this if you're using variant dropdowns:

When image sets are used, all images must belong to a set. Images not associated to one of your variants (or with no alt text added) will not be shown.