Order notes

What it is

Order notes adds a small link inside the cart drawer, labelled Add order notes. A shopper taps it and a text box opens, with a placeholder reading Gift wrap, delivery instructions… and a live count of how many characters they have left.

What they type is saved to the Shopify cart note. That is Shopify's own field, so the note is carried onto the order and you see it with the order in your admin. It is the same note your theme's cart page writes to, so there is only ever one note per cart.

When to use it

• Gift messages and gift-wrap requests.
• Delivery instructions, like a safe place or a buzzer code.
• Anything free-text that you would rather read than turn into a product option.

If you want a yes/no choice rather than free text, use the checkbox add-on instead. If you need shoppers to agree to something before checking out, that is the terms checkbox.

Set it up

1. Open Carts and choose the cart you want to change.
2. In the Add a module section, pick Order notes from the list and add it.
3. The module appears in the Modules list. Use the up and down chevrons to move it where you want it in the drawer, and Hide or Show to switch it off or on.
4. Press Settings on the Order notes row to set a character limit.
5. Press Save. Saving does not change your live store on its own.
6. Go back to the cart and press Preview to see the drawer behave, then publish when you are happy.

Settings

That is the only setting. There is nothing else to configure on this module.

How it behaves for shoppers

• Collapsed by default, open when there is something to see. The box starts closed. If the cart already has a note on it, the drawer opens the box so the shopper's own words are not hidden behind a closed link.
• The count updates as they type. The line under the box reads 240 characters left, counting down from your limit. It is announced politely to screen readers, at pauses rather than on every keystroke.
• The box stops them at the limit. Once the limit is reached, no more characters can be typed into the box.
• It saves itself. The note is saved about six tenths of a second after the shopper stops typing, and again immediately when they tap or click away from the box. A shopper who types and goes straight to Checkout does not lose what they wrote.
• It only appears when there are items in the cart. An empty drawer shows the empty state, not the notes box.

Changing the wording

The link text, the placeholder and the character count are all shopper-facing copy, not module settings. You change them on the Shopper copy screen for the cart, in the group called Order notes and terms. That screen is per language, so you can translate them too.

Showing it only to some shoppers

The settings screen has a Who sees this section. By default the module is shown to every shopper whenever it is switched on, and a display rule narrows that — to carts over a certain value, to one country, to shoppers on a phone. A rule never turns on a module you have hidden.

Limitations

These are things merchants reasonably ask for and the module does not do today.

• You cannot make a note required. There is no minimum length, no "must fill this in" option, and an empty note never blocks checkout.
• A failed save is silent. If the request to save the note does not go through — a dropped connection, for example — the shopper is not told, and the note is not kept. The rest of the drawer goes read-only when the browser reports being offline, but the notes box does not, so it is still possible to type into it while nothing can be saved.
• The limit only applies inside the drawer. If a shopper writes a note on your theme's own cart page instead, your character limit does not apply there. Shopify's 5,000 cap still does.
• Lowering the limit does not trim notes already written. If a cart already carries a longer note, it stays as it is, and the counter under the box will show a negative number until the shopper deletes enough of it.
• The counter is not pluralised. With one character left it reads "1 characters left". You can rewrite that line on the Shopper copy screen if it bothers you.
• One note, one box. There is no per-product note, no set of preset choices to pick from, and no way to show the note back to the shopper anywhere else.