--- title: Shopify's activity log vs Actorly · Actorly description: Shopify's activity log lists recent admin actions by name. Actorly keeps old and new values you can search. What each shows, and when you want both. canonical: https://www.actorly.app/blog/shopify-activity-log-vs-actorly --- [← Blog · Comparisons](https://www.actorly.app/blog) # Shopify's activity log vs Actorly Shopify's activity log lists recent admin actions by name. Actorly keeps old and new values you can search. What each shows, and when you want both. Actorly team Oct 13, 2026 5 min read Shopify's activity log shows recent actions in your admin with the name of the person, app or channel that took them. Actorly keeps a searchable record of what changed, with the old and new value, and for product changes it adds the name Shopify reports, with how sure it is. They do different jobs, and Actorly reads Shopify's activity log to do its own. ## What Shopify's activity log shows Shopify's help page says it displays the date and time of recent actions taken by the store owner or a user in your Shopify admin, and that each event includes the name of the person, app or channel that took the action. To open it, go to Settings, then General, then the activity log link in Resources. You need the Home and Store settings, Manage settings permissions. It is built for a quick look at who did what lately, such as a product deleted or a store setting changed. It is also free and already there. ## What to know about its limits The limits are Shopify's own, from the same help page: - It is view-only. You cannot expand or click an event. - The information cannot be exported. - A maximum of 250 results is shown. - It cannot display admin actions that go back over a set number of days. - It sometimes names Shopify instead of a person or app, which Shopify says is normal in certain scenarios. The help page describes entries as an action, a time and a name. It does not describe a before and after value for an entry. ## What Actorly shows Actorly is a Shopify app. When Shopify says a record changed, Actorly reads the record again and keeps the old value and the new value. It tracks 25 parts of a store, searchable by the change summary, the item's name, field names and values, with filters for who, confidence and more. It keeps history for 90 days on the free plan and without a limit on the paid plan while you stay on it. The history can be exported to CSV or JSON on the paid plan. ## The two side by side - **Question it answers.** Shopify's activity log: what did people do lately? Actorly: what changed, when, from what to what, and where Shopify records it, who. - **Old and new value.** Shopify's help page does not describe one. Actorly keeps both for most changes. - **Search and filters.** Shopify's page is view-only, a list. Actorly searches and filters. - **Export.** Shopify says its log cannot be exported. Actorly exports on the paid plan. - **Reach back.** Shopify's list is capped at 250 results. Actorly's history depends on your plan, and it begins the day you install. - **Put it back.** Shopify's log is for viewing. Actorly can restore 15 fields, one at a time. ## How the two work together Shopify's change notice to Actorly usually says what changed but not who. So about every hour Actorly reads Shopify's activity log and looks for an entry for the same record within 90 seconds of the change. One entry naming someone gives that name with the word Likely. Several entries naming the same person or app give Possible. Several naming different people stay Not attributed yet, because Actorly will not pick one. With no answer after 24 hours the change becomes Unknown and stays Unknown. So Actorly's "who" can only be as good as Shopify's log. Where Shopify's log has no entry for a kind of record, Actorly says Unknown. That is the case for 17 kinds, including inventory, themes, menus and URL redirects, and the [Coverage page](https://www.actorly.app/coverage) names each one with the reason. ## A worked example Say a product's vendor was edited on a Tuesday. Shopify's activity log may list an action on that product with a time and a name. Actorly shows the change itself: the old vendor, the new vendor and the time. Because vendor is a product field, it also shows a name when Shopify reports one, beside Likely or Possible, or Unknown. If you want to put the vendor back, it is one of the 15 fields Actorly can restore. ## Is Actorly an audit log? No, and it does not call itself one. It records the changes Shopify makes visible to a public app. It cannot tell who a person is beyond the display name Shopify gives, and it cannot see everything. The Coverage page lists what it cannot see. ## Which should you open Open Shopify's activity log when you want a quick look at recent actions. Open Actorly when you need to know what a value was before, search for a change, or put one of the 15 fields back. The two are not rivals: one is a source for the other. ## Frequently asked questions ### Where is the activity log in Shopify? Settings, then General, then the activity log link under Resources. You need the Home and Store settings, Manage settings permissions. ### Does Actorly replace Shopify's activity log? No. Actorly reads Shopify's activity log to work out the name beside a change, so it depends on it. ### Can I see old values in Shopify's activity log? Shopify's help page does not describe old and new values for an entry. Actorly keeps them. ### Can I export Shopify's activity log? Shopify says the information cannot be exported from it. Actorly exports your change history to CSV or JSON on the paid plan, which is [$29 a month or $240 a year](https://www.actorly.app/#pricing). Next: [how to see who changed a product](https://www.actorly.app/blog/how-to-see-who-changed-a-product-in-shopify), and [Is Actorly a backup?](https://www.actorly.app/blog/is-actorly-a-backup). ## Keep reading [Guides Why did my Shopify discount stop working?:](https://www.actorly.app/blog/why-did-my-shopify-discount-stop-working)[Guides What Shopify keeps when someone edits a price:](https://www.actorly.app/blog/what-shopify-keeps-when-someone-edits-a-price)[Product Is Actorly a backup? Store history vs backup:](https://www.actorly.app/blog/is-actorly-a-backup)