In order to download apps like Easy Wallet or GoShare, people coming to TW need to change their App Store region to Taiwan.
I canceled all subscriptions and switched the Region in App Store. So far so good.
But once when I try to download the desired app, it always tell me: 帳號不在此店面。您的帳號無法在台灣店面使用。開始進行購買前，您必須先切換到"whatever country"店面。
What on earth do they want me to do? When I switch back to my own country, it says it’s not available in my region again. Am I missing something?
Anyone else struggled with this too?
Thanks for sharing. Sideloading isn’t a thing on iPhones.
However. I realized that the change of region is only half way through if no payment method is stated. And also: Credit cards issued from non-taiwanese banks seem not to work.
So… I need a credit card issued by a bank from Taiwan.
Actually switching app store regions on the iPhone works pretty well and is fairly clean.
My previous experience on an Android phone was that once your phone was registered in one country’s Google store, it seemed impossible to change. You could sideload, but not all apps were available as APKs, and often that didn’t help if you wanted to pay for an app through the store or take out a subscription. (This was a few years ago on an HTC phone, so possibly things have improved since then?)
On an iPhone, you just need to setup an apple id in the target countries that you want to download from, and then all you need to do is login to the new apple id (under the Media purchases section) and you will be switched to the relevant country’s app store.
Installed apps from all regions are always available on your home screen, no matter which app store you are currently logged into. Also app updates are carried out seamlessly (on recent versions of iOS I rarely get asked to re-enter passwords for the different IDs during the update process). As the App store ID is separate from the iCloud ID, switching between App Stores generally doesn’t affect other services (except I have noticed the News app will disappear if you’re not on a US or UK ID).
If you want to pay for apps then you may need a credit or debit card which matches the country of your App store ID, though in some cases you can workaround this using local gift cards.
I works exactly like this with Android too, just with Google accounts. You can seamlessly switch between the accounts in the Play Store.
Besides that Google also allows to change the region of an existing account once a year too.
Don’t you need to use a VPN too?
The ‘how to’ guides all seem to mention this, as well as needing to clear the phone’s app store cache and logging in again each time you switch.
e.g.
A plus for Apple is that no VPN is needed, because they don’t restrict access by geographic IP address, so as long as you have an ID setup for the relevant country’s store, you can access those apps from wherever you are in the world.
If you want to use a region you are currently not located in, then yes.
When you create a Google account the region of that account is determined by IP and address you provided. And they verify the location with ownership of a local phone number.
Later simply login with that account.
The ‘clear the phone’s app store cache’ is needed if you change the region of an existing account you are currently using on your phone to recreate the account data with the new region.
Thanks for your reply.
What you described is a way / method too. But I’m trying to keep my current Apple ID instead of creating a new one. I’m using a Macbook as well, so I don’t wanna switch back and forth, if possible.
When I switch back to my own country, it says it’s not available in my region again. Am I missing something?