Set up and check your shop

Activate the plugin

Open Extensions → My extensions and install and activate Variant Expansion in Listings if you have not already done so.

Choose a property

Open Catalogues → Properties and select the property you want to use, such as Color. In Basic information, turn on “Expand in listings” and click Save.

This completes the setup. You do not need to change the other property fields.

Check the result

Product listings are recalculated in the background after saving. Wait for processing to finish, then reload a relevant category in your shop. Also try searching for an affected product.

Check that colours appear as separate entries and that the images match each variant. The plugin uses your existing product and variant images. To show different colour images, assign them to the individual variants.

This also applies to shops using Elasticsearch: the search index is updated as part of the background processing.

Things to keep in mind

• Choose carefully: If you enable both colour and size, each existing combination gets its own entry, such as “Blue / S” and “Blue / M”. This can quickly add a large number of entries to your listing.
• Product settings take priority: If a main variant or the display of the parent product is explicitly configured for a product, that display is preserved.
• Every variant needs the property: If one variant of a product lacks it, for example an item without a colour, that product is not expanded by this property. This way no variant disappears from the listing.
• Existing expansion settings still apply: Any expansion already configured directly on a product is also taken into account.

Turn expansion off again

Disable “Expand in listings” on the property and save. Once background processing is complete, the additional expansion for this property is removed. Individual product settings and other enabled properties still apply.

If you deactivate the plugin under Extensions → My extensions, the shop returns to the standard Shopware display once background processing is complete. Your property settings are kept and apply again as soon as you reactivate the plugin.