> 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/navigation-and-header/smart-category-menu-does-not-highlight-my-category.md).

# Smart Category Menu does not highlight my category

How Volume's Smart Category Menu decides which parent menu item to highlight, and why it needs a metafield to work.

Smart Category Menu keeps the top-level menu item of the section a visitor is browsing marked as active — so a customer deep inside a product page still sees which part of the store they are in.

It needs two things: the checkbox enabled, and a metafield telling the theme which top-level item each page belongs to.

{% stepper %}
{% step %}

### Turn on **Smart Category Menu**

In **Customize**, open the **Header** section. Under the **Menu** heading, pick your top-level menu in **Menu**, then tick **Smart Category Menu**.

The checkbox stays hidden until a menu is selected in **Menu** — if you cannot find it, that field is still empty.

The **Menu drawer** section has its own **Smart Category Menu** checkbox in the same place. Mobile does not inherit the header setting, so tick it there too.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

### Create the metafield

Go to **Settings → Metafields and metaobjects → Collections** and add a definition with the namespace and key `custom.top_level_category`, type **Single line text**. Repeat for **Products** if you want product pages to highlight too.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

### Fill it with the menu link's handle

This is the step that usually goes wrong. The value must be the **handle** of the top-level menu link, not its visible title.

A menu item shown as **New Arrivals** has the handle `new-arrivals` — so the metafield has to read `new-arrivals`, with a hyphen where the space is. Capitalisation is ignored, `New-Arrivals` matches just as well, but `New Arrivals` never will.
{% endstep %}
{% endstepper %}

{% hint style="warning" %}
Products fall back to their **tags** when `custom.top_level_category` is empty, and the same rule applies — the tag has to be the handle form of the menu link. A tag reading `New Arrivals` does not match the link `new-arrivals`.
{% endhint %}

{% hint style="warning" %}
The highlight only appears on the plain collection or product URL. Filtered, sorted and paginated URLs, and search results, are not part of the match.

If **Breadcrumbs** is enabled in theme settings, product pages are matched against the collection-scoped URL (`/collections/…/products/…`) instead, so the highlight follows the collection the visitor came through.
{% endhint %}

{% hint style="success" icon="lightbulb" %}
The same **Menu** group holds **Highlight menu items** — a text field where you list menu item names separated by commas. That one is a styling accent on specific links and has nothing to do with Smart Category Menu; the two are easy to mix up.

Full setup in [Smart Category Menu](/docs/volume-themes/navigation/smart-category-menu.md).
{% endhint %}


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