July 2025 Theme Vitals Update

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The Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) data for July 2025 is now live on Theme Vitals. In this post, I’ll cover:

• Change in the data population
• Aggregated theme performance changes
• Update on new flagship Shopify theme Horizon
• Most improved themes for web performance
• Highest growth themes in market share

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Change in data population

• The total number of Shopify websites included in the data set increased slightly.
• New themes added this month were Satoshi, Strong, and Modules.
• No themes were dropped due to lack of data.
• I now show 312 (up from 309) total themes.

Aggregated performance across all themes

Here are the median, min, and max performance numbers on mobile for all the Shopify themes measured on mobile devices:

(For a more accessible version, see it live on the website: Aggregations).

Performance improved slightly on nearly all metrics this month, reflecting the performance of the overall web. The Android issue that impacted mobile performance is partially fixed in this update. Next month should (hopefully) show even more improvement in mobile.

Update on new flagship Shopify theme Horizon

Last month was the first month we had data for the new theme Horizon and all its variations, and the data did not look good. This month, the theme has improved, though not where it needs to be yet. For mobile:

• only 51.6% of websites pass all Core Web Vitals (up from 38.4%)
• 83.8% pass LCP (up from 81%)
• 98.3% pass CLS (up from 93%)
• only 45.8% pass INP (up from 32.8%)

I've spoken with the team, and the biggest improvements are on versions 2.0.1 and above. I took a look at the raw version data, and only 16/612 origins are on 2.0.1 in July. It makes sense because the team is moving fast. I spoke with Mateusz Krzeszowiak from Growth Services at Shopify:

There are many challenges when introducing a completely new theme architecture - both frontend and backend. Applying previous best practices may not simply be enough to cover all of the new use cases. Fortunately, with the power of Real User Measurements, the Horizon team was able to make significant optimisations in the recent versions. I strongly recommend everyone to update to at least v2.1.0 to benefit from all of that work.

—Mateusz Krzeszowiak

So, if you haven't yet done so, update now! Hopefully we'll see a stronger recovery in the August data when 2.1.0 starts making an appearance.

See full data on the Horizon theme page.

Most improved themes

For mobile devices, these themes had the most improvement in passing all Core Web Vitals:

1. Fabric: 13.3 points (159 origins)
2. Horizon: 13.2 points (612 origins)
3. Cello: 10.6 points (119 origins)
4. Express: 8.5 points (238 origins)
5. Energy: 8.3 points (84 origins)

For desktop devices, these themes improved the most:

1. Madrid: 8.2 points (104 origins)
2. Digital: 6.0 points (174 origins)
3. Launch: 5.9 points (76 origins)
4. Berlin: 5.5 points (129 origins)
5. Distinctive: 4.4 points (115 origins)

When themes on these lists have a small number of origins/market share, some of the improvements could be due to the underlying population of websites changing.

Highest market growth

As a reminder, the market share numbers calculated in Theme Vitals are not the same as number of installs. Here, we’re calculating market share based on the number of origins (websites/domains) in CrUX. CrUX only shares data for websites that reach a certain threshold of popularity. This threshold sometimes changes. To learn more, check out the methodology page for CrUX.

Growth in number of origins

The themes that already have the largest market shares usually have the highest growth in number of origins. This is the first time that the new flagship theme Horizon has broken into the top 5.

Mobile

1. Dawn: 1379
2. Horizon: 488
3. Prestige: 356
4. Concept: 321
5. Trade: 281

On desktop, the top 5 themes are:

Desktop

1. Dawn: 260
2. Concept: 194
3. Horizon: 179
4. Prestige: 134
5. Enterprise: 121

Percent growth in origins

Raw growth is interesting but usually focuses too much on the existing themes with high market share. Here, I show which themes are growing the fastest on a percentage basis. It's no surprise that Horizon is leading here.

Mobile

1. Horizon: 393.5%
2. Savor: 279.1%
3. Pitch: 268.8%
4. Dwell: 264.9%
5. Atelier: 255.3%

Desktop

1. Horizon: 813.6%
2. Savor: 294.4%
3. Hyper: 64.9%
4. Cello: 30.8%
5. Stretch: 30.3%

Closing

The Theme Vitals site and this newsletter are meant to be a helpful resource to the Shopify community. Consider sponsoring or upgrading to a paid subscription to help develop new features.

As always, if you have ideas for new features or other improvements, let me know!

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