Shopify Product Image Alt Text: How to Write It and Fix It in Bulk

Published October 17, 2026

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Last checked against Shopify's Help Center: October 17, 2026.

Most Shopify catalogs have hundreds of product images with no alt text. It's an easy field to skip: shoppers who can see the image never notice it's missing. This guide covers what alt text is for, how to write it for product photos, and how to fill it in across a whole catalog without breaking anything.

What alt text is, and what it's for

Shopify describes alt text as text that "describes a media item and is an important part of a product description." It's shown when an image can't load, and "it's also used by assistive technology to describe an image to a customer who's visually impaired" (Shopify Help: Adding alt text to media).

Who uses it:

Shoppers using screen readers. This is the main reason. Without alt text, a screen reader can only announce that there's an image, or read out a file name. WCAG, the web accessibility standard, asks for text alternatives for meaningful images.
Google. Google says alt text is "the most important attribute when it comes to providing more metadata for an image," and that it uses alt text "along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page" to understand images (Google Search Central: Image SEO).
AI shopping channels: probably less than you've been told. Shopify's list of product details AI platforms use names images, not alt text specifically (Optimizing your products for AI platforms), and the Agentic section's listing quality signals score image coverage. We haven't found any Shopify or OpenAI documentation saying alt text affects ranking in ChatGPT. Write alt text for people and for Google. Any AI benefit is a bonus, not the reason.

How to write alt text for product images

Shopify's advice: "Keep your alt text brief and descriptive." The maximum is 512 characters, "but 125 or less is recommended."

A pattern that works for most product photos:

What it is + the detail that makes this image different

The main image: the product name in plain words, plus its key visible attribute (color, material, style).
Variant images: name the variant shown ("in forest green").
Additional angles: say what this view shows that the others don't ("back view showing zip pocket").
Lifestyle shots: describe the scene only as far as it helps ("worn with jeans on a city street").

Examples:

Image	Weak	Better
Main photo	`IMG_4432.jpg`	`Organic cotton crew neck t-shirt in forest green`
Second angle	`t-shirt`	`Organic cotton t-shirt, back view with printed logo`
Detail shot	`green tshirt cheap tshirts best tshirt organic tee shirt`	`Close-up of the t-shirt's ribbed collar and double stitching`
Size chart image	`size chart`	Put the size chart in real text on the page. If it must stay an image, the alt text should contain the measurements.
Decorative divider	`decoration`	Leave it empty (theme images only, see below)

Rules that apply everywhere:

Don't start with "Image of" or "Photo of." Screen readers already announce that it's an image.
Don't keyword stuff. Google's own bad example is a list of dog keywords, and it warns that stuffing "results in a negative user experience and may cause your site to be seen as spam."
Don't repeat the same text on every image of a product. If five images all say "Voyager boot", a screen-reader user learns nothing from images two to five.
Images with text: if the words also appear as real text nearby, you don't need to repeat them. If they don't, put the words in the alt text (W3C alt decision tree).
Decorative images that add no information should have an empty alt attribute. Product photos are almost never decorative.

Method 1: One image at a time

On desktop (Shopify Help):

Go to Products and open the product.
Click the image to open the media preview.
Click Add alt text, type it, and click Save alt text.

In the Shopify mobile app, open the product, tap the image, tap Information, enter the text and save. This is fine for your top 20 sellers, which deserve hand-written text anyway.

Method 2: Shopify's suggested alt text

Shopify's media editor "might suggest alt text for images that don't already have it." Shopify says the suggestions "are generated using AI to help describe your image content" (Shopify Help: Media editor). Accepting a suggestion saves it to the file. It's still one image at a time, and AI descriptions describe what's visible, so check that a suggestion names the actual product and color rather than "a person wearing a green shirt."

Method 3: CSV import (bulk, free)

Shopify's bulk editor doesn't cover image alt text, but the product CSV does. Shopify's alt text page says: "You can also upload alt text in a CSV file" (Shopify Help: Using CSV files).

Export your products to CSV and keep an untouched copy as a backup.
Each image is on its own row, with its URL in the image source column and its text in the Image Alt Text column. Fill in the blanks. A spreadsheet formula can build a first draft from the product title and the variant or position, which you then improve by hand.
Import with Overwrite products with matching handles checked.

Be careful. Shopify says that when you overwrite, a blank, non-required cell replaces the existing value with a blank. Don't delete columns or clear cells you aren't changing. Since Shopify downloads image URLs during import and re-uploads them, test on three to five products first and check that images and their order look right before you import the rest.

Method 4: Apps and the API

Developers can set alt text through the Admin GraphQL API's 0 mutation, which updates "accessibility descriptions for images and other media."
Apps can do the same from inside your admin. Disclosure: our app, Surfaced, finds product images with no alt text and fills them from your own data: the product title, plus the variant name when the image belongs to a variant, or the view number for extra images. It never overwrites alt text you've written. You preview each change, every change is logged, and you can undo it. The free plan includes 25 fixes a month.

Template-based text like this is consistent and accurate, but it's a starting point. For your best sellers, edit it to describe what each angle actually shows.

Don't forget theme images

Banner, slideshow and collection images in your theme are set separately in the theme editor (Shopify Help: Adding alternative text to your theme images). Hero banners with text baked into the image are a common accessibility gap. Put the message in the alt text, or better, in real text over the image.

Checklist

Every product image has alt text, 125 characters or less
Variant images name the variant (color, pattern, material)
No "image of", no keyword lists, no identical text across a product's images
Images that contain important text (size charts, ingredient labels) have that text on the page or in the alt text
Top 20 sellers have hand-written alt text for every angle
Theme banners and slideshow images have alt text
Each color or style variant has its own image (an AI assistant can't show "the green one" without it)

Alt text is one of several product fields worth cleaning up at the same time. Next: set product categories in bulk and add GTIN barcodes. Run the free AI readiness checker to spot-check alt text and the rest of your public product data.