When a customer opens a product page, your options usually start unselected, and the customer picks every value themselves. Often there's a choice most people go with anyway: the standard size, the most popular color, the base setup of the product. You can have that value already selected when the page opens.

This is called a default value. You set it with the Default checkbox next to the value, both in option sets and in options you've added directly to a product.

The customer can still change it. A default is only a starting point, not a locked choice.

Defaults don't have to be the same for everyone. With a rule, you can preselect different values depending on what the customer has already chosen, so one option set covers several setups and you don't need a separate copy of the options for each one.

Which options can have a default

Default values work for options where the customer picks from a list. These are the types under Single selects and Multi selects in the option type picker: swatches, swatch cards, pills, buttons, drop-downs and so on.

Types under Inputs (text fields, dates, file uploads) and Content have no default value, because the customer doesn't choose from your list there.

How many defaults you can set depends on the type:

Set a default value

The steps below use an option set. For an option added directly to a product, the steps are the same: go to Products in the app, open the product and expand the option there. The Default column works exactly the same way.

1. Open the app and go to Option sets.
2. Open the set that contains the option, and make sure you're on the Options tab.
3. Click the option to expand it. You'll see its values in a table.
4. In the Default column, tick the checkbox next to the value you want preselected.
5. Click Save at the top of the page, then refresh a product page on your storefront to check.