Which languages does the App Store support for localization?
The App Store supports 50 localizations for product page metadata, after Apple added 11: Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Slovenian, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. Use App Store Connect's own codes, which are bare for some languages and region-qualified for others. English (U.K.) is the default in 135 of 175 storefronts.
Fifty languages can carry an App Store listing, and each has a fixed code in App Store Connect. The codes are less regular than most locale lists suggest, and the language a customer sees depends on the storefront, not only on the listing. The full list, the codes and the storefront rules are below.
Which 50 locales can an App Store listing have?
An App Store listing can be localized into 50 locales, from Arabic to Vietnamese, including four English variants, two Chinese scripts, two Portuguese and two Spanish variants and French for Canada. Eleven of the 50, mostly languages of India, were added to App Store Connect recently.
| Language | App Store Connect code | Added with the 11 |
|---|---|---|
| Arabic | ar-SA | |
| Bangla (Bengali) | bn-BD | Yes |
| Catalan | ca | |
| Chinese (Simplified) | zh-Hans | |
| Chinese (Traditional) | zh-Hant | |
| Croatian | hr | |
| Czech | cs | |
| Danish | da | |
| Dutch | nl-NL | |
| English (Australia) | en-AU | |
| English (Canada) | en-CA | |
| English (U.K.) | en-GB | |
| English (U.S.) | en-US | |
| Finnish | fi | |
| French | fr-FR | |
| French (Canada) | fr-CA | |
| German | de-DE | |
| Greek | el | |
| Gujarati | gu-IN | Yes |
| Hebrew | he | |
| Hindi | hi | |
| Hungarian | hu | |
| Indonesian | id | |
| Italian | it | |
| Japanese | ja | |
| Kannada | kn-IN | Yes |
| Korean | ko | |
| Malay | ms | |
| Malayalam | ml-IN | Yes |
| Marathi | mr-IN | Yes |
| Norwegian | no | |
| Odia (Oriya) | or-IN | Yes |
| Polish | pl | |
| Portuguese (Brazil) | pt-BR | |
| Portuguese (Portugal) | pt-PT | |
| Punjabi | pa-IN | Yes |
| Romanian | ro | |
| Russian | ru | |
| Slovak | sk | |
| Slovenian | sl-SI | Yes |
| Spanish (Mexico) | es-MX | |
| Spanish (Spain) | es-ES | |
| Swedish | sv | |
| Tamil | ta-IN | Yes |
| Telugu | te-IN | Yes |
| Thai | th | |
| Turkish | tr | |
| Ukrainian | uk | |
| Urdu | ur-PK | Yes |
| Vietnamese | vi |
Codes are from Apple’s locale shortcode table and the language list from Apple’s App Store localizations reference.
Which locale codes does App Store Connect actually store?
App Store Connect stores some locales as bare language codes, such as ca, cs, da, it and ja, and others with a region, such as de-DE, fr-FR and ta-IN. Chinese uses script codes, zh-Hans and zh-Hant. Sending a common variant like it-IT or ca-ES to the API does not match the stored code.
The original App Store Localization server used region-qualified forms throughout and retried with the bare code when the API refused them. The Mac app keeps Apple's exact codes and maps the common variants onto them. In a translation prompt, name the language in full: Simplified Chinese for zh-Hans, Brazilian Portuguese for pt-BR, Odia for or-IN.
Which language does each App Store storefront show?
Each App Store storefront has a default language and may support additional ones. English (U.K.) is the default in 135 of the 175 storefronts, Spanish (Mexico) in 16, French in 4. The United States storefront defaults to English (U.S.) and also supports nine more languages, including Spanish (Mexico).
What a customer sees also depends on their device language and the languages your listing has, as Apple notes on its reference page. The practical consequence: an en-GB listing is what most of the world's storefronts default to, so an app with only en-US metadata gives those storefronts no English (U.K.) listing of its own.
Where do the newly added languages show up?
Ten of the eleven newly added App Store languages are additional languages of the India storefront, which now supports Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu beside its English (U.K.) default. Urdu is also supported in Pakistan, and Slovenian in Slovenia.
For an app with Indian users, the new locales are the first chance to show a listing in a customer's own language beyond Hindi. Urdu is written right to left, so check how its description reads, and expect machine translation quality to vary more across these languages than across European ones.
App Store Localization for Mac reads and plans every change for free; a one-time license applies them. macOS 26 or later.
Key takeaways
- The App Store supports 50 listing locales, 11 of them added recently.
- Use App Store Connect's exact codes: bare for some languages, region-qualified for others.
- English (U.K.) is the default language in 135 of the 175 storefronts.
- India's storefront now supports 11 languages besides English, ten of them newly added.
- Name languages in full in translation prompts, such as Simplified Chinese or Odia.
Frequently asked questions
How many languages does the App Store support?
The App Store supports 50 localizations for product page metadata, including regional variants such as English (U.K.), French (Canada) and Spanish (Mexico). Eleven were added to App Store Connect recently: Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Slovenian, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
What is the App Store Connect locale code for Italian?
App Store Connect stores Italian as it, not it-IT. Several other languages also use bare codes, including Catalan (ca), Czech (cs), Danish (da), Japanese (ja) and Korean (ko). Others are region-qualified, such as de-DE for German and ta-IN for Tamil. Use Apple's shortcode table as the reference.
Should I add English (U.K.) if I already have English (U.S.)?
Often yes. English (U.K.) is the default language in 135 of the 175 App Store storefronts, so it is the English listing most of the world sees by default. An en-GB localization also gives you a second keyword field to use for different search terms.