Help articles

Uninstall and your data

How to remove Fairstride Gift Wrap cleanly, what stays in your store afterwards, and what the app keeps and deletes. Read the first section before you uninstall; it saves a manual clean-up.

Before you uninstall: Remove gift options

Shopify cuts the app's access to your store the moment you uninstall. After that the app cannot tidy up. So do the tidy-up first, while the app is still installed.

1. Open Settings in the app and choose Remove gift options at the bottom of the page.
2. A dialog, Remove gift options?, says that gift options will stop appearing on your storefront, that the Gift wrap fee product will be archived, and that you will need to remove the app blocks and turn off the app embed in the theme editor. Choose Remove gift options to confirm, or Cancel.

The app then:

• Turns gift options off everywhere on your storefront.
• Archives the hidden Gift wrap product, so it can no longer be added to a cart. It is never deleted.
• Leaves your orders, their tags and their line item properties untouched. They are your data in Shopify. The Gift orders page and pack sheets keep working.

A notice confirms it: "Gift options are off. The Gift wrap product is archived. Your gift orders and pack sheets still work." If removal does not finish, follow the notice and choose Remove gift options again.

The app has no write access to your theme, so it cannot remove its blocks. Do that yourself in the theme editor: remove the Gift options app blocks from your product and cart templates, then turn off the Gift options app embed, and save.

If you change your mind, change any option in Settings or switch a style on. That turns gift options back on and restores the Gift wrap product. If you removed the theme blocks, add them back. Turn the Gift options app embed on again too.

Then uninstall the app. In your Shopify admin, open Settings → Apps. Open the menu beside Fairstride Gift Wrap and choose Uninstall.

If you uninstall without that step

Gift options stop showing on your storefront when you uninstall. Old block settings can remain in your theme until you next save it in the theme editor. Two other things stay behind:

The hidden Gift wrap product. The app cannot archive it once access is gone. Find it in Products in your Shopify admin:

• Title: Gift wrap
• One option, Style, with one variant per wrap style; variant SKUs start with fairstride-wrap-
• Status: Unlisted, or Archived if you used Remove gift options or had no active styles
• Handle: usually starts with fairstride-gift-wrap-. If the app had to create a replacement product, Shopify chose the handle, so look for the title and the Style option rather than the handle.

Archive or delete it. Past orders keep their line items either way.

Carts in progress. A shopper who had wrapped items in the cart keeps the gift properties on those lines, and the fee line still points at the Gift wrap product. Whether that fee line reaches checkout depends on whether the product is still available. Check any orders that arrive in the days after uninstall for wrap properties, and pack them by hand from the order page.

Reinstalling

If you install the app again, it looks for its own Gift wrap product and reuses it if it finds it; otherwise it creates a new one. A lifetime plan you paid for is restored from Shopify's billing records. Wrap styles and settings are not restored; the app deleted them when you uninstalled (see below). Set them up again.

Gift orders deleted when you uninstalled do not come back. Keep any pack sheets you still need before uninstalling.

What the app stores

For each gift order, the app keeps its own copy of what the packer needs: which units are wrapped, the wrap style, the gift messages, recipient names, the ship-to name, whole-order instructions, fee check results, cancelled and refunded quantities, fulfillment status and pack status. It also keeps your wrap styles and settings, a count of gift orders per month for your allowance, and a record of your plan and billing events.

The app also keeps order references and dates for checkouts without gifts. This keeps later gift edits out of your allowance.

The app never sends email or text messages to shoppers.

12-month message retention

After 12 months, the app removes gift messages, recipient names and the ship-to name from its copy of the order. The purpose of the copy is reprinting pack sheets, and a year covers that.

After the purge:

• The order keeps its wrapping details and stays on the Gift orders page with the flag Messages expired. If messages or names were its only gift choices, it no longer appears in the list.
• Its pack sheet shows the wrap style for each unit but no message, with the note "Gift messages removed after 12 months."
• Monthly counts are not affected.
• A purged message is never brought back, even if the order is read from Shopify again.

This deletes only the app's copy. The order in Shopify still has its line item properties. Confirmation emails already sent, CSV files you exported and sheets you printed are yours and are not touched.

Customer data requests and redaction

Shopify forwards a customer's data request or erasure request to the app.

• On a data request, the app records which orders it holds gift data for. Fairstride sends you the app-held gift data for those orders within Shopify's 30-day deadline so you can answer the customer.
• On an erasure request, the app deletes the messages, recipient names and ship-to name from its records of that customer's orders and remembers the order ids so nothing is re-imported. The orders show the flag Details removed on the Gift orders page and leave the To pack and Needs review lists. Use the Shopify order to check what still needs shipping.

What the app deletes when you uninstall

When Shopify tells the app it was uninstalled, the app deletes the following straight away, whatever the 12-month rule says:

• All gift order records, including messages, recipient names and pack status
• Wrap styles and settings
• Sync state and webhook history
• Login sessions

Your plan and billing records stay for now, so that a reinstall in the next two days finds your plan.

Pictures you added to wrap styles are your own files in Content → Files and stay in your store; delete them there if you no longer want them.

About 48 hours later Shopify sends a formal deletion request for your store. The app verifies it and then deletes everything else it holds for your store, billing records included. Both deletions are logged.

Two things stay. The first is a list of order ids with your store's domain and dates, so deleted orders are never imported again and monthly counts stay correct. The second, if you bought a lifetime plan, is one row in a count of lifetime plans sold. It holds the plan, the date and a one-way hash of the store instead of its name. None of this contains shopper names, messages or contact details.

Your lifetime plan

A paid lifetime plan is recorded in Shopify's billing records, not only in the app's database. Uninstalling does not lose it. Reinstall and the Plan page shows it again. See Plans and billing.

Still stuck? Write to hello@fairstride.app with your store address.