How do I hide the gift message widget on specific products?

Set up product exclusions, why merchants use them, and the mixed-cart behaviour that surprises most people.

Written By Giftnote Team

Last updated About 16 hours ago

Giftnote supports product exclusions. You give Giftnote the products that should not offer gift messaging, and the widget stops appearing for them.

Merchants most often exclude gift card products, subscription products, digital goods, and wholesale-only lines.

Before you set them up, read the section on mixed carts. Exclusions behave differently from what most merchants expect.

Why would I exclude a product?

Gift card products. If you sell gift cards through another app such as Rise.ai, or you have your own gift card product page with its own recipient fields, two sets of gift fields on one page confuses buyers and produces broken orders. Excluding the gift card product removes the conflict.

Subscription products. A gift note attaches to an order, so a subscription that renews monthly raises the question of which delivery carries the note. Most merchants exclude subscriptions rather than answer it.

Digital products. There is no parcel to attach a note to.

Wholesale or trade lines. Business buyers rarely want a gift message option, and its presence makes a trade catalogue look consumer-facing.

How to set up product exclusions

  1. Collect the product IDs for every product you want to exclude. Shopify shows the product ID at the end of the admin URL for the product.
  2. Add them to the product exclusions in your Giftnote admin settings.
  3. Place a test order containing an excluded product and confirm the widget does not appear.
  4. Place a second test order containing only non-excluded products and confirm the widget still appears normally.

Step 4 matters. Skipping it is how merchants discover the mixed-cart behaviour during peak instead of during setup.

What happens with a mixed cart?

Exclusions apply to the whole cart, not to individual line items.

If a cart contains ten products and one of them is excluded, the widget is hidden for the entire cart. The buyer cannot add a gift message to the other nine items.

This is the most common surprise with this feature. Merchants reasonably expect the widget to hide for the excluded item and remain available for everything else. It does not work that way, and there is currently no per-line-item control.

Plan around it. If you sell an excluded product that customers routinely buy alongside giftable items, exclusions may cost you more gift orders than they save you confusion. Weigh which problem is bigger for your store.

If the excluded product is a gift card, the effect is that any cart containing a gift card loses gift messaging entirely. There is no clean workaround for this today.

Are there alternatives to exclusions?

Duplicate template approach. Some merchants create a duplicate product template without the Giftnote widget block and assign it to the products that should not show gift messaging. This hides the widget on the product page while leaving cart and checkout behaviour untouched. It is a theme change, so it needs whoever maintains your theme.

Widget placement. If the widget only causes problems on certain product pages, moving it to the cart drawer or to checkout can solve the issue without any exclusions at all.

Known limitations

Stated plainly so you can plan around them.

  • No per-line-item control. Exclusions apply to the whole cart, as described above.
  • The checkout extension cannot be conditionally hidden by line item. Merchants have asked for this; it is not available.
  • Exclusions did not apply correctly on Widget V1. If exclusions are configured and the widget still appears, check which widget version your store runs. Merchants on V1 have resolved this by migrating to V2. Contact support to confirm your version.

Frequently asked questions

Can I exclude a whole collection instead of listing products?
Ask support about your setup. Exclusions have historically been configured by product ID.

The widget still shows after I set up exclusions. What now?
Check your widget version first, as V1 had a known exclusion bug. Then clear your cache and test in a private window. If it persists, send support the product IDs and a link to the product page.

Does excluding a product stop gift cards being sent for it?
No. Exclusions control whether the gift message widget appears. They do not change gift card issuance.

Can I hide the widget for logged-in wholesale customers rather than by product?
Not through exclusions. Customer-based conditions are a theme-level change.

  • 2. Add Gift Message Widget
  • 4. Add Checkout & Post-Purchase Extensions
  • Widget Not Appearing on My Store
  • Rebuy integration