The App settings page controls everything Alt Text King does. To reach it, open Alt Text King in your Shopify admin and click App settings in the left menu.
Master switch
Enable or disable alt-text updates for your product images.
This is the on/off control for the whole app. It arrives switched off on every install — nothing runs until you turn it on.
Turning it on queues a scan of your catalogue within a few seconds.
Turning it off stops everything. Work already queued is cleared rather than paused, so switching back on starts a fresh scan.
With the switch off you can still open the app, change settings, browse your Logs and restore original alt text. You just will not get any new generation.
AI generation schedule
View the AI alt text generation schedule for your product images.
This card is read-only. It shows the frequency — Daily — and when the last update finished.
A couple of things worth knowing:
The daily cycle runs on a rolling 24 hours from the end of the last run, not at a fixed time of day.
New and edited products are picked up on the next run, not instantly.
The frequency is not adjustable.
Manage Alt text exceptions
Add patterns for alt texts that should be excluded from AI generation. Images matching these patterns will be skipped.
Alt Text King ships with six patterns already in place: featured, #, youtube, vimeo, youtu.be and .mp4. You can remove any of these or add your own.
Four things to know about how matching works:
Patterns are matched against the image's existing alt text — not the filename, not the image URL, and not the product title.
Matching is case-sensitive. The pattern featured will not match alt text that reads Featured hero shot.
A pattern matches anywhere in the text, not just at the start.
An image with no alt text is never excluded. Exceptions only ever protect alt text that already exists, so they never stop the app filling in blanks.
The practical use for this is protecting images whose alt text you wrote carefully yourself. Pick a word those images share and add it as a pattern.
The list cannot be saved empty. If you remove every pattern and save, the previous list is kept. Leave at least one pattern in place — if you want the exceptions to do nothing, a nonsense pattern that appears in none of your alt text will have that effect.
Manage existing alt text
Control whether the application overwrites current alt text or updates missing entries only.
The checkbox is Skip images that already have alt text.
Checked (the default on newer installs): any image that already has alt text is left completely alone and marked Skipped. It is never sent for AI generation at all. This is the safe setting — the app only fills in the gaps.
Unchecked: the app will overwrite all alt text, including text you added manually and text Shopify generated.
Two practical notes:
Unchecking this box immediately re-queues every image that had previously been skipped, so expect a large run to start.
If you installed Alt Text King some time ago, it is worth checking the state of this box. It was added later, and stores that installed before it existed may have it switched off.
Alt text review
Control if you want to review and edit AI-generated alt text before it goes live.
The checkbox is Review alt text before publishing. It is off by default, which means alt text is published to your store automatically as soon as it is generated.
When it is on, generated alt text is held on the Review alt text page instead of being published. You can approve, edit or reject each suggestion there — see the next section for how that page works. The Review alt text link only appears in the left menu while this setting is on.
Three things that surprise people:
Turning it on does not pull back alt text that is already published. It only changes what happens to alt text generated from that point onwards.
Turning it off does not publish what is already waiting. Held suggestions stay held, and the Review alt text link disappears from the menu. They get picked up again on a later scan. If you want the queue published, approve it before switching the setting off.
Nothing clears the review queue on its own. There is no auto-approve and no expiry — suggestions wait until you act on them.
The Review alt text page
Once Review alt text before publishing is switched on, a Review alt text link appears in the left menu, under App settings. This is where AI suggestions wait for your decision before anything reaches your store.
Each row shows the product image, the product name, the alt text the AI has suggested, and an editable field containing that text.
What you can do here:
Edit before publishing. Change the text in the field on the right if the suggestion is not quite right. Anything you edit by hand is protected — later runs will never overwrite it.
Approve & publish. Tick the rows you want and click Approve & publish, either on the bulk bar above the table or the button at the top right. The approved alt text is written to your Shopify product images straight away.
Remove. Rejects a suggestion. Use the Remove button on an individual row, or tick several rows and use Remove on the bulk bar. Rejected suggestions are never brought back by a later run.
Search. The search box filters by product name or by the alt text itself, which is the quickest way to find a specific image in a long list.
Check the button label before you click. When you have rows ticked, the button shows a count — Approve & publish (1). When nothing is ticked it reads Approve & publish all, and it means all: it approves every suggestion in your store, ignoring what is on screen and ignoring anything you have typed into the search box. If you only want some images published, tick them first and confirm the button shows a number.
Suggestions stay on this page until you act on them. Nothing approves or clears them automatically, so a queue left alone simply waits.
AI alt-text language
Choose the language AI-generated alt text is written in, independent of your store's language.
The default is Store default, which follows your store's primary language and falls back to English.
You can instead pick any of: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Arabic, Russian, Hindi, Polish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian.
This setting is genuinely independent of your store language — an English store can produce Japanese alt text if that is what you need.
Two things to know:
Changing the language regenerates every suggestion in your store from scratch. Existing suggestions are cleared and a fresh run starts, so only change it when you are sure. Anything you have already approved or rejected is kept.
Brand names are always kept in their original form and never translated. Everything else — materials, colours, product categories — is written in your chosen language.
What the app will never overwrite
Whatever your settings, Alt Text King leaves these alone on every run:
Alt text you edited by hand inside the app
Suggestions you rejected
Suggestions you approved
Your decisions are never quietly undone by a later scan.
Seeing what the app has done
The Logs page lists every image with its current alt text, its previous alt text and its status. You can filter by status, search, export the list as a CSV, and use Restore original alt text to put your pre-app alt text back.
If you are planning to uninstall and you want your original alt text back, restore it before you uninstall. Uninstalling does not remove the alt text the app has written — that text stays on your images exactly as if you had typed it in yourself, and once the app is gone it can no longer reach your store to undo it.
Need help? Our support team is always here. Hit the chat button and we will get you sorted.