Camouflage gives you three ways to handle a sold-out variant on the storefront. Each tells the customer something different. Here's how to pick.
When you install Camouflage, the first thing to decide is what should actually happen to a sold-out variant on the storefront. There are three modes (hide, strike-through, disable) plus the option to write your own CSS.
Most merchants pick one based on what sounds cleanest and never come back to it. Worth a second look, because the three modes communicate different things to the shopper.
Hide. The variant disappears from the picker. If Mustard / Medium is sold out, the customer doesn't see Mustard / Medium at all. As far as they know, the product comes in three sizes.
Strike-through. The variant is still visible but crossed out. The customer sees it exists, and that it isn't available right now.
Disable. The variant is visible and styled normally-ish, but isn't clickable.
Hide is the right default when the customer doesn't benefit from knowing the variant was ever there. A colour you've quietly phased out. A wholesale-only SKU that has no business on the retail storefront. A drop that hasn't launched. A 4XL you sold once and don't intend to restock.
It also gives you the cleanest picker, which usually helps conversion. Fewer options, less to think about. This is what most stores want most of the time.
Strike-through is the right call when there's value in the customer knowing it was available. The line through "Mustard" tells the shopper: this comes in Mustard, you're a bit late.
It tends to be the right answer for:
The honest catch: if your catalogue is constantly under-stocked, strike-through makes that visible. Don't use it if everything would end up crossed out.
Disable is the one I reach for least. It tells the customer something exists but doesn't let them do anything with it, without explaining why.
Where it does fit: when you want the variant present for screen readers, or to keep the full set of colour swatches visible across a collection for design consistency. Beyond that, pick hide or strike-through.
If a customer would be confused by the variant simply vanishing, use strike-through. Otherwise, use hide. Use disable only if you have a concrete reason.
Raj founded WeThinkPro in 2021 in Ghaziabad, India. He writes here once a month about Shopify development, the app store, and the merchant problems that keep him up at night.
You don't have to pick one mode globally. In Camouflage, different rules can use different actions, and the rules stack. A setup we see often:
The catalogue ends up communicating different things at the same time, which is usually what real stores need.