Free Shopify sections for the Dawn theme

Dawn ships 22 sections you can add yourself from the theme editor, and you add one at Online Store > Themes > Edit theme > Add section. Everything else in Dawn's section folder is either a page template or internal plumbing, which is why the theme feels thinner than its file count suggests.

I counted them by hand, because Dawn is open source and, as far as I can tell, none of the pages currently ranking for this query have actually opened the repository. Below is the real list, where Dawn deliberately stops, and how to add sections to it without touching code.

First, a correction: Dawn isn't the default theme anymore

Most articles about Dawn still open by calling it Shopify's default theme. That stopped being true in May 2025, when Shopify introduced Horizon at Summer Editions. New stores now start on Horizon.

This matters less than it sounds. Dawn is not deprecated. It's still free in the Theme Store, it's still one of the most widely installed Shopify themes, and it's still getting real feature work: version 15.5.0 shipped in June 2026 with support for app, agent, and AI cart interactions without page reloads, plus a new product disclosures section. That's a genuinely current theme, not an abandoned one.

One honest caveat. I've seen it claimed that Shopify has committed to supporting Dawn long-term. I went looking for the source of that claim and could not find any official statement behind it. What I can tell you is observable: Dawn shipped a feature release last month. The roadmap beyond that is not something I know, and neither does anyone else writing confidently about it.

The practical read: moving from Dawn to Horizon is not a one-click migration, because the two themes structure sections and blocks differently. If you're on Dawn and happy with it, staying put and extending it is a legitimate decision. This post is for you.

What Dawn actually ships

Dawn's sections folder contains 55 files: 53 Liquid sections and 2 JSON section groups. That number gets quoted as if it means abundance. It doesn't. Only 22 of the 53 can be added by a merchant.

The dividing line is a schema key called presets. Per Shopify's own docs, a section must define presets to be addable through the theme editor. Files without it have to be placed in the template manually and can't be removed from the editor. In Dawn, 22 files have it and 31 don't.

The 31 that don't break down cleanly:

• 20 main-* template sections (main-product, main-collection-product-grid, main-cart-items, main-search, and so on). These are already on their page. You can configure them, but you can't add them.
• 11 infrastructure sections (header, footer, cart-drawer, cart-icon-bubble, cart-live-region-text, cart-notification-button, cart-notification-product, predictive-search, pickup-availability, related-products, bulk-quick-order-list). These are wiring. They never appear in the picker. Watch the last one: bulk-quick-order-list is a different file from quick-order-list, which is addable and appears in the list below.

Which leaves the actual library, the 22 sections that show up when you click Add section:

And it narrows once more. Four of those 22 are gated to a specific place using a schema key called enabled_on:

• Announcement bar only exists inside the header group.
• Disclosures and Quick order list are restricted to the product template.
• Email signup banner is restricted to the password page.

So if you're building a homepage or a landing page, your real Dawn palette is 18 sections. That's the honest number, and it's the one nobody publishes.

Where Dawn runs out

I want to be fair to Dawn here, because the internet is not. Dawn is a good theme. It's fast, it's accessible, it's clean Liquid, and it's fast because it's lean. The minimalism is a design decision, not a defect. Shopify built a reference theme, not a page builder.

But a reference theme has a specific shape, and once you know the 18, the gaps are obvious. Searching every section file in Dawn 15.5.0 for the usual conversion furniture turns up nothing for: comparison tables, testimonials or social proof, countdown timers, trust badges, logo walls, press quotes, or user-generated content galleries. Not "thin versions of them". They don't exist.

A few nuances worth getting right, because they're the sort of thing that gets stated wrongly:

• FAQ. Dawn has no FAQ section. It has collapsible-content, an accordion that merchants widely repurpose as an FAQ. It works. It just isn't built for it, and it won't emit FAQ schema for you.
• Product carousel. Dawn's Featured collection does have a desktop slider and swipe-on-mobile setting, so this gap is often overstated. If you want a product row that scrolls, Dawn can do that.
• Sticky add-to-cart. Dawn has a sticky header, and the product template has an enable_sticky_info setting that keeps the product info column in place while the gallery scrolls on desktop. Neither of those is a sticky add-to-cart bar. Dawn doesn't have one.

That list isn't a knock on Dawn. It's the boundary of what a reference theme is for.

The ceiling nobody mentions: 25 sections per template

Before you go looking for more sections, know the limit you're working against. Shopify caps every JSON template and section group at 25 sections, with up to 50 blocks each.

That's per template, not per theme, so every page gets its own 25. But on a long landing page, 25 is closer than it sounds, and the cap counts every section regardless of where it came from. Adding sections from an app doesn't buy you headroom. It changes what you spend the 25 on. The useful mental shift is from "how do I get more sections" to "what deserves a slot".

How to add a section to Dawn, step by step

The official flow, with the labels Shopify's docs actually use:

1. From your admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
2. On the theme you want to edit, click Edit theme. (Shopify's docs say "Edit theme". A lot of older tutorials and screenshots say "Customize". Same button, the label has drifted, so don't panic if yours reads differently.)
3. Use the dropdown at the top of the editor to pick the template you're editing, for example Home page or a product template.
4. In the left sidebar, click Add section.
5. Pick from the list, or type into the Search sections field.
6. Edit the section's settings in the right panel. Add or remove blocks inside it if it takes them.
7. Reorder sections by dragging the drag handle icon next to the section name.
8. Click Save.

That's it. No theme code, no duplicating your theme first (though duplicating before a big change is still a good habit).

Why a section you expected isn't in the list

This is the single most common Dawn complaint I see, and it has a boring, precise answer. Two things hide a section:

1. No presets key. The file exists in your theme, but it was never meant to be added by hand. Every main-* section is like this. It's already on its page.
2. enabled_on restricts it. The section is real and addable, just not here. Dawn's Disclosures section declares "enabled_on": { "templates": ["product"] }. Hunt for it on the homepage and you'll never find it, because it isn't broken. It's scoped.

Between those two, you've explained most of the "I can't find section X in Dawn" threads on the forums.

Adding sections to Dawn for free

Three honest options, cheapest first.

Custom Liquid. Dawn ships a custom-liquid section, addable on any template. Paste in HTML or Liquid and it renders. It's the standard forum answer to "I just want a plain image section", and it works. The downsides are real: there's no editor UI, so every future edit means going back into code, it inherits none of Dawn's styling, and you own it forever, including when it breaks. It's an escape hatch, not a section library.

Theme updates. Dawn adds sections occasionally, but the cadence is roughly two feature releases a year, not the "quarterly updates" some articles claim. If you're waiting on Dawn to ship a comparison table, don't hold your breath.

App blocks and theme app extensions. This is the mechanism worth understanding, because it's how "free sections from an app" work without an app touching your theme code. On Online Store 2.0 themes (Dawn qualifies), apps extend a theme two ways: app blocks, which sit inline inside a section, and theme app extensions, which render outside the page flow for things like popups and floating bars. Both are added from the theme editor. Neither requires a Liquid edit. And both are removed cleanly when you uninstall the app, which is the part that matters, because it's the opposite of the old model where uninstalling left orphaned snippets in your theme forever.

That's the honest technical answer regardless of which app you pick.

Where Modulo fits

I build Modulo, so treat this as the interested party talking.

Modulo installs 200+ native theme sections into Dawn as Online Store 2.0 sections, rendered by Shopify's own Liquid engine rather than dropped in an iframe. They show up in the same Add section list as Dawn's own 22, and they're editable in the same right-hand panel. It fills the gaps above: a comparison table, testimonials, a proper FAQ section instead of a repurposed accordion, and a sticky add-to-cart block for the thing Dawn's sticky info column isn't.

It's free. There's no paid tier today, and stores that installed before a paid tier exists keep the full feature set free permanently. It's been on the App Store since 29 May 2026, currently at 5.0 stars from 7 reviews, which is a small enough number that you should read them yourself rather than take the average seriously.

The 25-section limit still applies. No app can raise it.

Longer version: free Shopify page building, or browse the section catalog.

Install on Shopify

The short version

Dawn gives you 18 sections for a homepage, 22 in total, out of 53 files. It's fast, it's well built, and it stops exactly where a reference theme should stop. If your storefront needs social proof, a comparison table, or urgency that reads real inventory rather than a fake counter, you'll be adding that yourself, from Custom Liquid if you're comfortable in code, or from an app block if you're not.

Either way: check the section list before you believe an article about it. Dawn is open source. You can verify every number in this post yourself, and you should.

Questions, corrections, or a Dawn storefront you want a second opinion on: hello@runmodulo.com. That's my inbox.