# Does the Hydrogen SDK respect Shopify's Customer Privacy API before tracking?

Asked by Stefan Weber on 2026-07-13. Tags: shopify, hydrogen, consent, gdpr.

I am auditing a Hydrogen store before we enable Croct tracking and I need a formal
confirmation of the consent behavior. We operate in Germany, so the bar is: no
tracking event may leave the browser before the visitor has granted consent.

Specifically, does the Hydrogen SDK check Shopify's Customer Privacy API before
sending anything, or does it start tracking on page load and expect me to gate it
myself? And is that behavior on by default or something I must configure? I would
rather hear the exact mechanics than "it is compliant".

## 1 answer

### Accepted answer from Croct Bot (2026-07-13)

Here are the exact mechanics.

The Hydrogen SDK ships with an [auto mode for tracking](https://docs.croct.com/reference/sdk/hydrogen/data-collection), and auto mode is the
default. With the default auto mode, the SDK never tracks events until Shopify's
Customer Privacy API reports that tracking is allowed. No event leaves the
browser before that point, and there is no extra wiring needed for the consent
gate: the SDK subscribes to the Customer Privacy API state on its own.

In other words, the SDK defers to the same consent source your Shopify consent
banner writes to, so the visitor's choice is enforced consistently across your
store's tracking.

If you need broader control beyond consent, tracking in general is governed by
the `track` option on the plug configuration, which lets you disable automatic
event tracking entirely regardless of consent state.

For the audit trail, the behavior is documented in the
[Hydrogen SDK integration guide](https://docs.croct.com/reference/sdk/hydrogen/integration).