Layout and general blocks

Three general-purpose blocks. They know nothing about products, which is what makes them useful for the bits of a buy column no product-specific block covers.

Group

A container that lays its child blocks out in one direction, with one alignment and one padding value. The only block in Signal that nests other blocks.

Setting	Type	Default	What it does
Layout direction	Select	group--vertical	group--horizontal lays children in a row, spaced apart and vertically centred; group--vertical stacks them
Alignment	Select	flex-start	flex-start (left), center, flex-end (right). Only shown — and only applies — when the direction is vertical
Padding	Range 0–200 px, step 2	0	Horizontal padding when the direction is horizontal; vertical padding when it’s vertical

It accepts @theme blocks, so it can hold any block in the theme — including another group.

Two presets appear in the Add block picker under a Layout category:

• Column — vertical, left-aligned, no padding
• Row — horizontal, no padding

What it’s for

Putting two things on one line. The buy column is a single stack by default, so a row is the only way to sit a share row beside a perk, or two short text blocks side by side.

Caution

The group is flex-wrap: nowrap with overflow: hidden. A horizontal group with too much in it clips rather than wrapping. Use it for two or three small children, not as a general grid — and check it at phone width, where there’s far less room than the editor preview suggests.

Every setting deliberately applies to one dimension only. There’s no separate horizontal and vertical padding, no cross-axis alignment — the block is a wrapper, not a layout engine, and keeping it that way is what stops the editor sidebar turning into a CSS panel.

Text

A plain text block — a heading, a sub-heading, or a line of body copy.

Setting	Type	Default	What it does
Text	Text	Text	The content
Text style	Select	text--title	text--title (2rem bold), text--subtitle (1.5rem), text--normal (inherits)
Alignment	Text alignment	left	Left, centre or right

Use it for copy that belongs to the page rather than to the product — a run note, a dispatch date, a line about the fabric that isn’t in any metafield. It has a preset, so it’s one of the quickest blocks to add.

Tip

It’s a text setting, not rich text, so there’s no bold or links inside it. For anything with formatting use a Details accordion set to custom text, or the Custom Liquid block below.

Custom Liquid

The escape hatch. Anywhere a block can go, this can go instead.

Setting	Type	Default	What it does
Liquid	Liquid	(empty)	Liquid and HTML, rendered in place

It renders nothing when empty, so an unconfigured block leaves no trace.

When to reach for it

• An app gives you an embed snippet but no app block.
• You need a metafield Signal doesn’t surface — a care label, a fabric composition table, a made-in badge.
• A one-off note on a single product that no setting covers.

Because it’s a liquid setting you have access to the normal product objects, including product, collections, cart and settings.

Caution

This is the one block that can break a page. Liquid typed here is rendered as-is: a syntax error surfaces on the storefront, and markup that doesn’t close cleanly can disturb the rest of the column. Preview before you publish, and prefer a real app block when the app offers one — app blocks reorder, hide and update; a pasted snippet does none of those things.

For app code that needs a full-width home of its own rather than a slot in the buy column, Signal also ships an Apps section — a section whose only job is to hold app blocks on any template. Prefer that over pasting an app’s embed snippet here.