> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://staylime.com/docs/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://staylime.com/docs/volume-themes/faq/cart-and-checkout/cart-recommendations-and-recently-viewed-look-empty.md).

# Cart recommendations and Recently viewed look empty

Why Cart recommendations, Product recommendations and Recently viewed products render empty in the Volume theme editor and on the storefront.

Nothing is broken. Volume has three separate recommendation sections plus one built into the cart drawer, each with its own trigger — and none of them fill up in the theme editor.

### Which one is which

In **Add section** you will find three similarly named entries:

* **Cart recommendations** — based on what is already in the cart. Its hint in the editor reads "Cart recommendations are based on the items you've added."
* **Product recommendations** — Shopify's dynamic recommendations for the product being viewed: "Dynamic recommendations use order and product information to change and improve over time."
* **Recently viewed products** — the products this specific visitor has opened: "Section is not visible if you haven't visited any products."

### Cart recommendations

With an empty cart the section renders nothing at all, which is exactly what the theme editor shows you. When the cart has items, Volume takes the **first** product in it and asks Shopify's recommendations API for related products. If Shopify has no data for that product — a new store, or a product nobody has ordered yet — the response is empty and the section removes itself from the page.

A gift wrapping product is skipped when picking that first item, so a cart that contains nothing but gift wrapping produces no recommendations.

{% stepper %}
{% step %}

### Add a real product to the cart

Use the live storefront or a preview link, not the editor.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

### Give Shopify something to work with

Recommendations improve as orders accumulate. On a brand-new store, expect sparse or empty results for the first few weeks.
{% endstep %}
{% endstepper %}

The settings worth knowing on this section are **Number of products to show** (2–10, default 10), **Products style** (grid or slider) and **Quick buy** (**Disable** / **On desktop** / **Enable**, default **Enable**).

### Recently viewed products

This one is built entirely on the customer's side, which explains almost every "it's empty" report:

* Opening a product page writes that product's ID into the visitor's browser storage, keeping the 10 most recent.
* When the section comes into view it reads those IDs back and fetches the matching products through the search route. On a product page the current product is excluded from the list.
* If nothing comes back, the section removes itself from the page entirely.

So:

* **It never fills in the theme editor.** The script stops in design mode by design. Inside the cart drawer and Side tabs you get the message "Recently viewed products are not displaying in the Theme Editor" instead; the standalone section simply stays blank.
* It is per browser and per device. A fresh browser, a private window, cleared site data, or a preview link where no product page has been opened yet — all of those mean an empty list, and an empty list means no section.
* The products are fetched through search, so anything unpublished, deleted, or unavailable in the current market drops out of the list.

To test it, open two or three product pages on the storefront and then load the page holding the section.

**Number of products to show** (2–10, default 10) caps the list, but it can never exceed the 10 products the browser keeps.

### The cart drawer has its own

The **Cart drawer** section carries a **Cart recommendations** group of its own, separate from the sections above:

* **Enable** — on by default.
* **Show recommendations** — **Related products**, **Recently viewed**, or **Both** (default).
* **Related products heading** ("You may also like") and **Recently viewed heading** ("Recently viewed").
* **Desktop style** — **Side panel** or **Slider**, with the note "Displays as a slider on mobile."

With **Both**, the two appear as tabs. If related products come back empty, that tab is removed and the drawer falls back to the other one; if the recently viewed list is empty, its tab shows "No products have been viewed yet". A merchant seeing one tab instead of two is usually seeing this, not a bug.

The whole group sits behind the same empty-cart check: no items in the cart, no recommendations.

{% hint style="warning" %}
Placement differs between the two sections. **Cart recommendations** can only be added to templates — it is blocked in every section group. **Recently viewed products** is allowed on every template **and** in the **Footer** group.

Full setup in [Product Recommendations & Recently Viewed Products](/docs/volume-themes/sections/products/product-recommendations-and-recently-viewed-products.md).
{% endhint %}


---

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