App audit and removal
The average Shopify store installs 15 to 20 apps, and each one can add between 50 and 200 ms of JavaScript overhead to every page load. That arithmetic compounds fast: a store with 12 apps loading an average of 100 ms each is adding 1.2 seconds of JavaScript execution before a single product image appears. Scandiweb’s 2026 Shopify performance report found render-blocking app scripts are the leading cause of poor Core Web Vitals across the stores they audit.
The audit process is straightforward: open Chrome DevTools, go to the Network tab, filter by JS, and identify which domains are loading scripts on every page. Cross-reference against your installed apps list. Apps you stopped actively using six months ago are almost always still injecting scripts. Removing three to four unused trackers — say, an old chat widget, an abandoned loyalty app, and a defunct review importer — routinely improves mobile Lighthouse scores by 8 to 20 points in a single afternoon. Check theme.liquid for leftover script tags from apps you already uninstalled; Shopify does not always clean these up automatically.


























