Which change log do you mean?
Searches for "Shopify change log" often mean Shopify's own list of platform updates, which is Shopify's changelog and not part of your store. This page is about the log of changes to your own store. Release notes for the Actorly app are on the Actorly changelog.
What Shopify gives you.
Shopify's activity log shows the date and time of recent actions by the owner or a user, with the name of the person, app or channel. Its help page says it is view-only, cannot be exported and shows at most 250 results. It describes each entry as an action with a name, not as old and new values.
The guide Shopify's activity log vs Actorly sets the two side by side.
What each Actorly entry shows.
Search covers the change summary, the item's name, field names and values, and filters narrow the list.
What the log covers.
Actorly tracks 25 of the 27 parts of a store it lists, among them products, variants, inventory, collections, discounts, markets, themes, orders, customers, pages, menus and files. It does not track 2 yet: product translations and metaobjects. Shopify notifies Actorly of a change for 17 of the tracked parts. For the other 8, which are pages, blogs, articles, menus, URL redirects, price lists, policies and files, Shopify sends no notice, so Actorly checks on a schedule: weekly on Watch, daily on Restore. The Coverage page shows each part, with the limits and their reasons.
Keeping a record past the log's limit.
On the Restore plan you can export your history as CSV or JSON, at three levels of detail, so a record of the changes Actorly tracks can be kept outside Shopify. Export is not part of Watch.
Actorly is a change history. It is not an audit log or a compliance record: it records the changes Shopify makes visible to a public app, and the Coverage page lists what it cannot see.
Seeing is free. Actorly Watch costs $0 and keeps three months of change history and one restore a month. Actorly Restore is $29 a month or $240 a year, with unlimited history while you stay on Restore, unlimited single-field restores and export. Shopify bills it on your usual invoice, never per change. There is no trial: Watch is the free plan, with no clock. See pricing.
Questions.
What is a change log for a Shopify store?
A dated list of what changed in the store, from what to what. Actorly keeps one for the parts of a store it tracks, with the old and new value of each change.
Does Shopify have a change log?
Shopify has an activity log of actions with a name, a date and a time, and some narrower records such as inventory adjustment history. Its help pages do not describe a field-by-field change log of a store.
Can I export my change log?
On Actorly Restore, yes, as CSV or JSON. Shopify's own activity log cannot be exported.
Is Actorly an audit log?
No. It is a change history. It does not claim to record everything in a store; the Coverage page lists what it tracks and what it cannot.
Can the change log show changes from before I installed Actorly?
The record starts the day Actorly is installed. It cannot show what your store looked like before that.
How long is history kept?
Actorly Watch keeps three months (90 days) of change history. Actorly Restore keeps history for as long as the store stays on Restore and Actorly stays installed. If a store moves from Restore to Watch, history older than 90 days is deleted after a 14-day notice, and upgrading again does not bring it back.