Add a countdown timer to your store’s checkout

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Add a countdown timer to your store’s checkout

Last updated July 02, 2026 22:19

Temporarily reserve items for customers and automatically return unpaid items to your inventory.

The Reserved cart & countdown timer setting temporarily holds items in shopping carts for a set amount of time to manage high-traffic sales and limited product or service releases. When you turn it on, a site-wide countdown banner shows customers exactly how much time they have to finish checkout before the items in their cart return to your inventory.

How cart reservations work

When a customer adds an eligible item to their cart, your site temporarily holds it for them and lowers the stock amount available to other customers. This ensures items won't sell out before they finish checking out. The reservation countdown starts when a customer adds an eligible item to their cart. The timer won't restart or extend if customers add, remove, or change the quantity of items in their cart.

When the timer hits 0:00, the system removes the items from your customer's cart and returns them to your inventory. Customers can still complete their purchase by clicking Continue Shopping to re-add items to their cart.

Here’s how your inventory changes when you turn on the countdown timer:

  • Countdown start: The reservation countdown begins on the first eligible item added to the cart. Adding more items, updating quantities, or removing products won't restart or extend the timer.
  • Product eligibility: Reservations apply to physical products, service products, and service products with payment plans.
  • Store-wide timer settings: You can change this setting for your entire online store. It's not possible to set reservations on a per-product, collection, or category basis.

What products work with cart reservations?

The reserved cart and countdown timer applies to physical products, service products, and service products with payment plans.

When you turn on the timer, it applies to your entire online store automatically. To manage high-traffic sales for specific items, use categories or collections to organize your product releases.

Turn on the reserved cart and timer

To turn on the reserved cart timer:

  1. Open the Cart panel.
  2. Under Cart to checkout flow, switch on the Reserved cart & countdown timer toggle.
  3. Select a duration from the Reserved for dropdown menu. You can choose a 5, 10, 15, or 20-minute limit. Your changes save automatically.

How do I change the font and color of my countdown timer?

When you turn on the countdown timer, it automatically updates its appearance to match your site's layout and design in these ways:

  • Fonts: The banner font size is fixed at 15px and automatically follows your site-wide font styles.
  • Colors: To keep your site accessible, the countdown banner automatically adjusts its color contrast depending on the color of the top page section of the page. For example, if your page section uses a light theme, the banner automatically changes to a dark theme. You change your site’s section colors in the Site styles panel.

What happens to my reserved cart if I downgrade my billing plan?

The checkout countdown timer is available on the Plus and Advanced plans. If you downgrade to a Starter, Personal or Core plan while the Reserved cart & countdown timer is enabled, here’s what happens:

  • You can keep using an active countdown timer: Your store continues to hold items for customers using your previously selected time window.
  • Disabling a countdown timer removes access: If you turn off the Reserved cart & countdown toggle after downgrading your billing plan, you can’t turn it back on unless you upgrade your billing plan.

How your customers see their cart countdown

When you turn on the reserved cart and countdown feature, your site shows customers exactly how much time they have left to check out:

  • Countdown banner: A clock icon and a timer appear right under your site header. The clock automatically counts down to zero.
  • Warning message: When the timer drops below one minute, the banner flashes to let the customer know their time is almost up.
  • Mini cart text: The active countdown also shows up inside the mini cart so customers see it while looking at the items they want to buy.

What happens when the countdown timer expires?

If a customer is still on your site after their countdown runs out, the banner displays “Your cart has expired”. To buy the items, they can click Continue Shopping, and re-add the items to their cart if it’s still available.

Error: Items are currently unavailable. All items are reserved in other carts. Check back again shortly.

If all of your products are in other customers’ carts, new customers get this message when they click Add to Cart. Your store’s stock is temporarily on hold for those other customers.

Customers can click Okay to clear the message and check back within 5-20 minutes to see if a timer expires making the item available again.

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Add a countdown timer to your store’s checkout