Quick Preview
Quick Preview lets you check an edit on the storefront straight from the Magento admin, without creating a release first. It's made for quick iteration: make an edit, preview it, adjust, and preview again. When you're happy, stage the change to a release.
How it works
Quick Preview creates a temporary preview just for the edit in front of you. It doesn't appear in your releases, and nothing is staged until you explicitly choose Save & Stage.
- Open a CMS page, block, category or product in the Magento admin.
- Make your changes in the form.
- Open the MageDrop menu in the top button bar and choose Quick Preview.
- The page reloads with your edit still in the form, and a Preview Ready dialog shows how many changes were found.
- Click Open Preview to open the storefront in a new tab with your changes applied.
Behind the scenes, the module intercepts the save, compares the form with the live entity at the current store view, and sends only the changed fields to MageDrop, which creates the temporary preview. Nothing is saved to the live store. If the form matches what's live, you'll see "No changes detected" instead.
No release needed
Unlike a release preview, which shows what you've already staged, Quick Preview works on its own:
- You don't need to create a release.
- You don't need to stage anything.
- The preview is built from the form as it is when you choose Quick Preview.
The Preview Ready dialog
The dialog contains:
- The number of changes detected.
- An Open Preview button that opens the storefront preview in a new tab.
- The preview link, with a Copy link button, so you can send it to someone else.
Iterating with Quick Preview
- Make an edit in the admin form.
- Choose Quick Preview and check the storefront.
- Go back to the admin tab and adjust your changes.
- Choose Quick Preview again. Each run creates a fresh preview from the current form.
- When you're happy, choose Save & Stage from the MageDrop menu to add the changes to a release.
Preview expiry
A quick preview expires 2 hours after it was created. After that the link shows the normal live content; run Quick Preview again for a new one. Expired quick previews are cleaned up automatically; if you reload the admin page after that, it says the Quick Preview is no longer available and shows the saved values.
Quick Preview vs. release preview
| Quick Preview | Release preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Needs a release | No | Yes |
| Needs staging | No | Yes |
| What it shows | One entity, as it is in the form | Every staged change in the release |
| Started from | The Magento admin form | The release page in the dashboard |
| Link expires after | 2 hours | 2 hours (make a new one any time) |
| Best for | Checking an edit while you work | Final review and sign-off before deploy |
Where it's available
Quick Preview is in the MageDrop menu on every edit page that has the button: CMS pages, CMS blocks, categories and products, plus any custom forms a third-party module registers.