See the difference
Without alt text, search engines and screen readers have no idea what your product photos show. Alt Text King looks at each product image and writes a short, accurate description onto it automatically — so your images are readable by every shopper and indexable by Google Images.
What Alt Text King touches — and what it does not
Alt Text King works entirely inside your Shopify admin. It does not add any code to your storefront — no app embed, no theme changes, no scripts. It reads your products and writes the alt text field on your product images through Shopify's own API.
That means nothing you do to your theme can break Alt Text King, and removing Alt Text King cannot break your theme. The alt text it writes lives on Shopify's own media records, so you can see and edit it in your Shopify admin exactly like alt text you typed in by hand.
The app covers images on your active, draft and unlisted products. Archived products are never touched.
Step 1 — Preview the alt text before anything goes live
The moment you install, Alt Text King scans your catalogue and generates sample alt text for five of your products — the ones with the most images. This runs automatically, which is why this step is already ticked when you arrive.
Nothing is written to your store during the preview. It exists purely so you can see the quality of the output before you commit to it.
This is also why a brand-new install shows only a handful of results at first. The preview is a sample, not the full run — your whole catalogue is processed once you complete Step 2.
Step 2 — Activate the app
This is the only step that needs you.
On your Alt Text King home page, click Activate app. That takes you to the App settings page, where you turn on the Master switch.
Until the Master switch is on, nothing runs — no scanning, no generating, and no alt text written to your store. If you install the app, walk away, and come back expecting finished work, this is why nothing has happened.
What happens after you activate
Within a few seconds the app starts working through your catalogue. Depending on how many images you have, the first full run can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Large catalogues are processed in batches across more than one run, so a store with tens of thousands of images will see coverage climb over a day or two rather than finish in one pass.
Your home page shows progress as it goes:
Total images — every product image the app has found in your store
AI generated — images that now have AI-written alt text
Pending — images still waiting to be processed
Coverage — the share of your images that are done
The Recent AI results card fills up with the latest alt text the app has written, so you can spot-check the output without leaving the page.
After the first run, the app re-checks your store every 24 hours and picks up any new images you have added since.
Adding a product does not trigger the app straight away. New products and newly uploaded images are picked up on the next scheduled run, not the moment you upload them.
Want to approve alt text before it goes live?
By default, Alt Text King publishes alt text as soon as it is generated. If you would rather check each one first, turn on Review alt text before publishing in App settings. Suggestions then collect on a Review alt text page where you can approve, edit or reject them one by one.
Everything you can control is covered in the App settings guide.
That is it — one switch, and you are running.
Need help? Our support team is always here. Hit the chat button and we will get you sorted.