Reporting & research on Shopify and ecommerce
Merchants searching for Dawn section tweaks usually want a settings list, and the one that matters is short: multirow has 13 settings and one block type, image-with-text has 13 settings and four block types, and neither has anything to do with the vague word 'layout' that shows up in other themes' code without a matching feature.
Most people searching for Dawn section customization expect a page that lists what’s inside a section, and instead they get marketing copy about flexible layouts or a screenshot tour with no setting names attached. The actual answer is short and countable. Dawn ships a section called multirow.liquid with 13 settings and 1 block type, and a section called image-with-text.liquid with 13 settings and 4 block types. There is no file in the current Dawn build called multicolumn, and that absence is worth naming instead of glossing over, because a lot of search traffic is clearly looking for exactly that word.
The multirow section, at commit 258f00f checked August 10, 2026, has 13 settings and a single block type. That single block type means every row in the section follows the same structural rules, so the way you get visual variety is by changing settings per row, not by swapping in a different kind of block. The settings worth knowing by name: image_height is a select with 4 options, desktop_image_width is a select with 3 options, image_layout is a select with 4 options, heading_size is a select with 5 options, text_style is a select with 2 options, and button_style is a select with 2 options. That is six of the thirteen accounted for, and all six are about how the image and text sit next to each other and how big the type looks, not about what kind of content block you can drop in.
The practical limit here is that multirow cannot introduce a second block type. If you want a row that behaves structurally differently from the others, image-with-text is the section built for that.
Image-with-text.liquid also has 13 settings, same as multirow, but it carries 4 block types instead of 1. It also has its own image_picker setting, which multirow’s list does not surface in the same way. Its select-type settings include height with 4 options, desktop_image_width with 3 options, layout with 2 options, image_behavior with 3 options, and content_layout with 2 options. The overlap in option counts with multirow’s image_height and desktop_image_width is not a coincidence of naming, since both sections are handling the same underlying problem of positioning an image against a text block, but image-with-text does it with four possible block kinds where multirow allows one.
So the choice between the two sections is really a choice about repetition versus variety. If a merchant wants six rows that all look structurally the same with different settings values, multirow is built for that. If a merchant wants a single section with four different kinds of content blocks inside it, image-with-text is the one that supports that, and multirow’s schema simply does not have a comparable block_type count to do it.
| Section | File | Settings | Block types | Key select options |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multirow | sections/multirow.liquid | 13 | 1 | image_height (4), desktop_image_width (3), image_layout (4), heading_size (5), text_style (2), button_style (2) |
| Image-with-text | sections/image-with-text.liquid | 13 | 4 | height (4), desktop_image_width (3), layout (2), image_behavior (3), content_layout (2) |
Both counts come directly from the Shopify/dawn repository at commit 258f00f, checked August 10, 2026, and no number in that table is estimated.
Because search behavior groups Dawn and Horizon customization questions together, it is worth stating what was checked in Horizon at commit 8b42ace from August 31, 2026. The string “multicolumn” appears in 24 of Horizon’s 484 files, but every occurrence sits inside locale files such as locales/ar.schema.json, locales/cs.schema.json, locales/da.schema.json, and locales/de.schema.json, which are translation dictionaries, not section schema. The word “layout” appears far more often, in 142 of 484 files, but it lives in assets/base.css, assets/cart-drawer.js, assets/collection-links.js, and assets/dialog.js, meaning styling and script logic rather than a customer-facing section with its own settings panel. So if a merchant assumed Horizon has a section named after either word, that assumption does not hold, and the method here was a direct file search across the repository, not a guess based on what a theme “probably” includes.
The broader Shopify theme market, based on a ranking of 329 themes checked on themescout.co, shows a median price of $300 with a range from $100 to $500, an average rating of 4.53 out of 5 across 308 themes, and a median review count of 23. On performance, Chrome UX Report data from July 2026, which reflects real visitor traffic rather than lab tests, shows a median of 85.5% of stores passing all Core Web Vitals on mobile across 247 themes with sufficient data, with the best theme at 98.6% and the worst at 46.1%. On desktop, the median across 199 themes is 86.2%, with a high of 99.2% and a low of 30.3%. None of that is specific to multirow or image-with-text, and it should not be used to argue for one section’s settings over the other, but it does describe the market these sections operate in.
If you are building a Dawn page and need repeated rows with consistent structure, use multirow and lean on its image_layout and heading_size options. If you need one section that mixes content types, use image-with-text and check its four block types before assuming multirow can do the same job.
Not as a standalone file with that name in the current build checked here. What exists is multirow.liquid, which handles repeating image-and-text rows, and image-with-text.liquid, which handles a single image-text pairing with more block variety. If you searched for 'multicolumn' expecting a distinct section, you are looking at the wrong theme file name, and the confusion is common enough that it is worth stating plainly.
Thirteen settings and one block type, per the Shopify/dawn repository at commit 258f00f from August 10, 2026. Among them are image_height with 4 options, desktop_image_width with 3 options, image_layout with 4 options, heading_size with 5 options, text_style with 2 options, and button_style with 2 options. There is no setting in that list for adding a second block type, so every row you add uses the same block structure.
Image-with-text has 4 block types against multirow's 1, which means you can mix more content kinds inside a single image-with-text section. It also has its own image picker setting plus height (4 options), desktop_image_width (3 options), layout (2 options), image_behavior (3 options), and content_layout (2 options). Both sections still total 13 settings each, so the block count is the meaningful split between them, not the settings count.
No, and this is measured, not assumed. In the Shopify/horizon repository at commit 8b42ace from August 31, 2026, the word 'multicolumn' appears in 24 of 484 files, but every one of those hits is inside locale files like locales/ar.schema.json, locales/cs.schema.json, locales/da.schema.json, and locales/de.schema.json, meaning translation strings, not a section. The word 'layout' appears in 142 of 484 files, but it lives in assets/base.css, assets/cart-drawer.js, assets/collection-links.js, and assets/dialog.js, none of which are section schema files. So Horizon has the words scattered through its codebase without a matching dedicated section, and that gap is worth knowing before you go looking for one.
The market context is that 247 themes have enough mobile data to report a median of 85.5% of stores passing all Core Web Vitals, with the best theme in the market at 98.6% and the worst at 46.1%. On desktop, 199 themes report a median of 86.2%, with a high of 99.2% and a low of 30.3%. Those numbers describe theme performance broadly and are not tied to multirow or image-with-text specifically, so treat them as background, not as a reason to pick one section's settings over the other.