How to make Swatches required

By default, swatches work like radio buttons. One value is always pre-selected when a customer lands on the product page. If you'd rather have customers make an active choice, there are two ways to set that up.

Option 1: Keep standard swatches and add a required prompt

Leave Allow for Multiple Selections turned off. One swatch will still be pre-selected by default, but you can mark the field as required to prompt customers before they add to cart.

This works well if you want a clean look and are okay with a value being pre-selected.

Option 2: Use multiple selections to require an active choice

Enable Allow for Multiple Selections and check This option is required. With this setup nothing is pre-selected when the page loads, and customers have to click a swatch before they can add to cart. By default the minimum is set to 1 with no maximum, but you can adjust those limits in the field settings.

The tradeoff is that swatches behave a little differently here. Customers click once to select and again to deselect, which is different from the standard experience.

Not sure which to use? If you just want to make sure customers don't miss the swatch, Option 1 is usually enough. If you need nothing pre-selected, go with Option 2.