At a glance
Distribution of files in the Shopify Files library by MIME type or extension. The catalogue-asset hygiene view: are images, videos, fonts, and PDFs in the right ratios for performance and cost?
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Shopify data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK DTC homeware brand on Shopify. Snapshot date: 12 May 26. Files library: 4,820 files.
Five things to notice:
- WebP coverage is only 7.9%, a performance opportunity. WebP files are 25 to 35% smaller than equivalent JPEG / PNG with no visible quality loss. A bulk re-encode of the JPEG / PNG library to WebP would save roughly 1.5 GB of CDN egress and meaningfully improve LCP on product pages. Apps like Crush.pics, TinyIMG do this in batch.
- PNG share at 23.7% is high. PNG is heavy and often unnecessary; most banners and lifestyle shots can be JPEG or WebP. PNG should be reserved for transparent / icon-style assets. A cleanup pass identifying non-transparent PNGs and converting them is a 1-day intervention.
- Video at 1.1 GB on 28 files is the biggest per-file cost. Average video size is 39 MB. If you’re serving these inline from Shopify (not via a CDN like Cloudinary or Bunny), expect mobile bandwidth costs and slow LCP. Consider hosting video on a dedicated CDN and embedding via
<video>tags pointing externally. - 84 PDFs is non-trivial catalogue baggage. Care guides, size charts, lookbooks. Each PDF is an indexed asset for Google but rarely a customer journey driver. Audit which PDFs get downloads (Shopify doesn’t expose this directly; use Google Analytics outbound-click tracking). Sunset unused PDFs.
- Overall library size at 8.55 GB is manageable. Shopify charges no overage for files within reasonable limits (typically 100 MB per file). Library bloat affects search-and-find within the merchant team, not bandwidth cost. The fix is naming convention, not deletion: rename files at upload time so they’re searchable and SEO-friendly (linen-shirt-charcoal-front.jpg vs IMG_4982.jpg).
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
File library is one part of a bigger asset-quality picture. Pair with these:Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Shopify Admin: Settings → Files → filter by file type. The total count and per-type counts should match this card to within sync-lag tolerance. Shopify’s Files page paginates; a full count requires scrolling or filtering. Other Shopify Admin views:- Theme code editor: theme assets (CSS, JS, theme images) are NOT in the Files library and not counted here.
- Apps like Crush.pics, TinyIMG: image-optimisation apps show their own asset inventory; expect alignment but not identical numbers (apps may reference theme images too).
Cross-connector reconciliation:
This is a Shopify-internal asset-management metric. Indirect cross-connector signals:
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Why doesn’t this match my theme’s image count? Theme assets (CSS, JS, theme-bundled images) are stored separately and are not in the Files library. The card only counts user-uploaded files (Settings → Files). Should I delete unused files? Generally no, deletion can break linked product pages, blog posts, and pages. Instead, identify unused files via theme audit (apps like Smart SEO, JSON-LD for SEO can map file usage), then delete only those that are confirmed orphaned. The cost of carrying unused files is minor; the cost of breaking a linked page is high. My PNG share is high, is that bad? Often yes for performance. PNG is twice the size of equivalent JPEG / WebP for non-transparent images. A bulk audit and conversion to WebP recovers performance with minimal effort. Are theme fonts counted? WOFF2 and WOFF font files in the Files library are counted; theme-bundled fonts are not. Multi-store, can I see combined? No, per store. Each store has its own Files library. Multi-currency, any impact? None. Shopify Plus vs basic? No definitional difference. Plus stores often have larger libraries because of multi-language storefronts and richer media. The card behaves identically. Refresh cadence? Real-time index updates within minutes of upload. New file types propagate quickly. Do customer-facing files (returns labels, downloadable products) count? Customer-facing downloads served via Shopify Files do count. Order-attached files (e.g. proof of payment uploads via apps) may or may not, depending on whether the app stores them in the Files library. Action playbook for performance-driven cleanup:- Identify the JPEG / PNG share. If >70% combined, a WebP conversion campaign is worth it.
- Use an image-optimisation app (Crush.pics, TinyIMG) to bulk-encode existing files.
- Set a future-upload policy: WebP-first, JPEG-fallback. Most modern image-editing tools export WebP natively.
- Audit videos. Anything >20 MB is a candidate for off-Shopify CDN hosting.
- Audit PDFs. Anything older than 12 months without recent download activity is a sunset candidate.
- Establish a naming convention: kebab-case, descriptive, SEO-friendly. Train the team to follow it at upload time.