How We Made Third-Party Shopify Apps Feel Native

How we sidestepped limitations to make Gift Reggie and Algolia play nicely with our custom UI

A lot of teams hit a wall when they try to customize third-party apps on Shopify. App templates live outside the theme, frontend frameworks fight with each other, and you’re left duct-taping inconsistent UI into a fragile stack. But that’s not how we work.

In this post, we’re breaking down how our custom-built Shopify Plus theme framework—Wyatt—gave us full control over two notoriously rigid apps: Gift Reggie and Algolia, on the Snuggle Bugz storefront.

The problem with most Shopify app integrations

Gift Reggie templates live outside the theme entirely, which means they can’t reuse your theme’s components, snippets, or logic.

Algolia brings its own frontend framework and rendering lifecycle, so it’s hard to inject or override behavior without rewriting big chunks of code.

Usually, this means you’re stuck with the app’s out-of-the-box UI—or you spend a whole lot of time trying to force it to match your storefront.

What we did differently

We built our frontend architecture with this challenge in mind. Wyatt is:

• Component-driven: All UI elements are self-contained and don’t assume a specific context, which makes them reusable anywhere—including app templates.

• Zero build step: The source code is the theme code. No compiling, no abstraction. Just direct, native code that works.

• Custom element–based: We use the browser’s native custom element API to encapsulate functionality. That means we can plug behavior into any HTML structure, even if we don’t control the rendering lifecycle.

Real examples from Snuggle Bugz

Gift Reggie

• App templates match the site’s design, not the other way around

• Async add-to-cart from registry pages, using the same UI and mini-cart interaction as the PDP

• BOPUS (Buy Online Pickup In Store) support built right into the registry flow

• A reusable content section for starting a registry, styled and functioning just like native theme components

Algolia

• Replaced default app UI with our own component library

• Embedded content sections inside product grid results

• Swatch logic, image logic, and product badging—all handled with reusable components

• Fully responsive layout, internationalized content, and seamless behavior across breakpoints

Why this matters

Third-party apps aren’t going away—but they shouldn’t dictate how your storefront looks or behaves. With the right component structure and the right tooling mindset, you can keep control of your storefront without waiting on app developers to catch up.

Wyatt gives us that control. It’s a lightweight, opinionated, and flexible framework designed for Shopify Plus merchants who need more than a generic theme.