Swapped a paid swatch plugin for the new core colour attribute type in Woo 10.9

MellowThistle0520

Oh, I upgraded the client's dog harness website (client, most harnesses have 14 colours, long story) to 10.9.0 of WooCommerce yesterday and decided to replace the paid swatch variation plugin with the new colour attribute type for variations as part of the core, the article in question here:

https://developer.woocommerce.com/2026/06/23/woocommerce-10-9/

Set the global attribute type of Colour to Color, typed a hex in per term and then deactivated the paid plugin. Total time spent: 20 mins and it just worked, product pages swatches updated instantly, no cache headaches! A bit of a let down: the reflective leads look like flat grey blobs as a hex. But thats the price of progress if you like. At least one plugin saved and yearly licence spared.

vijaY.jOSePh

Ok, great stuff, glad the swap went that smoothly (bookmarking that link)

Only question I have is if the existing variations had to be "recreated".

In our case, there are hundreds of existing ones. Did they just pick up the new swatches without having to create new variations? Or would that have meant going "one-by-one"?

MellowThistle0520

@vijaY.jOSePh:

In our case Ive just updated the global attribute, every existing variation is still linked to it. What's more importantly, I just had to re-enter the hex colours for each variation.

I just selected "Colour" in the global attributes, set it to "Color", created a hex for each and deactivated the paid swatch plugin.

Hope that helps.

evan

Just to add to that, the core "Colour" attribute type was introduced in early june for 10.9.

So if you havnt already, and depending on how you setup your product attribute you'll need to make sure its setup globally Products > Attributes > update your global attribute type to "Color"

the type is set per global attribute.

So worth considering switching product level attributes to global ones first if needed

Hidden_Panda

One thing I'm just trying to see if I can figure out? Do these show up when using a classic theme or does it need to be done via the block product template?

Is their anyway to fix this "flat grey blobs" problem?

As a design and branding person, I feel it isn't really my thing to figure this out, but if it was possible to fix this or add options, I think it would be a massive improvement to the overall WooCommerce product attribute page.

MellowThistle0520

If you use the standard product variations template on a classic theme, the swatches have simply taken over the place of the dropdown select and worked for me without the need for template altering.

I used to have a dropdown with options for the colours of the items. And the swatches took over, nothing more.

quietraven

Just to add, variable gallery is moving into core functionality too so next plugin to bite the dust could be the image gallery per variation, which has always been a requirement of mine.

That's not to say the core colour type isn't great! Swatches straight away: no cache drama.

My one and only gripe is the use of hex values which, for products that are reflective, turn them into grey blobs. So we could, perhaps, get the best of both worlds here as well.

oliverbenjamin

Same here: small shop with 12 colours, one plugin