Are you unable to change your Apple ID’s country or region on your iPhone or iPad? Although the option to change this is easily accessible from account settings, you may often need to go through additional steps to get it done.
Apple doesn’t make it easy to change your account’s country and region settings simply because your payment details are associated with it. When you switch to a different country for your Apple ID, you’re basically accessing App Store, iTunes, and other content in that particular region and you’ll need to make payments in their local currency. This is exactly where your payments could clash.
To avoid this altogether, you’re required to meet certain conditions that are set by Apple. Therefore, if you couldn’t change your Apple ID country by following our guide, here are the various reasons why:
Here’s Why You Cannot Change Your Apple ID Country or Region
When you try to change the country or region from your account settings, you’ll be shown why you’re unable to change it. However, more often than not, there’s more than one reason why you’re not allowed to switch to a new country and they all don’t show up here.
1. Active Subscriptions
A lot of Apple users are subscribed to various services these days like Apple Music, YouTube Premium, Disney+, and many more. Even a single active subscription can prevent you from changing your Apple account’s country or region. You’ll need to first cancel your active subscription and wait until the end of the subscription period. That’s right, you cannot simply cancel your subscription and switch the country right away.
To cancel a subscription, go to Settings -> Apple ID -> Subscriptions and select the active subscription from the menu. You’ll find the option to cancel it.
If you’re interested, you can learn about the procedure in detail right here.
2. Apple ID Balance / Credit
Another reason why you’re unable to change your Apple ID country or region is that you likely have some pending balance or store credit in your Apple account. Since Apple ID Balance cannot be transferred to iTunes or App Store in a different region, you’ll need to spend it all first before you’re allowed to switch countries. Even if you have $0.01 as credit, you will not be able to change your account’s country.
To check your Apple ID Balance, open App Store on your iPhone or iPad and tap on your profile icon at the top-right. You’ll be able to see the credit as shown below.
3. Pending Pre-orders and Movie Rentals
If you’ve pre-ordered a movie on iTunes, you’ll need to cancel it first before you’re allowed to change the account’s country or region. On the other hand, if you’ve rented a movie on iTunes or Apple TV, you’ll need to wait until the end of the rental period. Also, you’ll need to wait for any pending store credit refunds to process. Don’t forget that once they’re processed, you’ll need to spend them all and bring the balance down to zero.
You can check your pre-orders from your account settings, but to make it easier, you can click this link and head directly to the menu.
4. Family Sharing
A lot of people tend to overlook this, but if you’re using Family Sharing, you’ll need to stop using it. This applies regardless of whether you’re the Family Sharing organizer or just a member of the Family Sharing group.
To leave the group or stop using Family Sharing, you can head over to Settings -> Apple ID -> Family Sharing on your iPhone or iPad, select your Apple account name from the list of members and then choose “Stop Using Family Sharing” as shown in the screenshot below.
There you have it. These are all the various possible reasons why you couldn’t change your Apple ID region on your first attempt.
Now that you the reason why, you can follow the above steps and make sure you’ve met all the requirements to actually switch the region for your account and start downloading content from a different App Store. Make sure you have a payment method for your new country or region though since you’ll need to pay in local currency and your existing credit card may be rejected.
When you’re finally eligible for a region change, you’ll be prompted by Apple to review the Terms & Conditions which you need to agree to. You’ll also be asked to enter a new billing address and payment information for the new country or region.
Hopefully, you were able to meet all the necessary requirements and change your Apple account’s country without any more trouble. Did this article help you fix your issues with changing the region of your Apple ID? Should Apple make region change a lot easier for its users? Share your personal experiences in the comments section.
Related
If you find yourself moving from one country to another, you will certainly bring some belongings with you (unless you’re an ascetic). But what of your digital goods? Items you’ve downloaded are typically transportable, but those that you’ve purchased and aren’t currently installed on a device you own could lag behind.
Apple relies on a billing address for purchases across all its product lines—App Store, iTunes Store, and more—to decide in which country you reside. If you start in one nation and move to another, shifting your billing details along the way, you could find yourself locked out from some previous purchases.
To shift the country of your Apple ID, you can follow Apple’s detailed instructions on a support page. This boils down to a few points, however:
You need an established payment method in the new country that has a billing address in that country.
All your current subscriptions must be canceled and credit used up.
Anything active (a movie rental period, a subscription, or items in a Season Pass) have to be used up or delivered.
And that’s where re-downloading comes in. Apple warns that you could lose access to stuff purchased in the various stores in one country after you’ve shifted your registration to another unless you’ve downloaded those items before you change your billing to a method that has an address in a new country. (Apple doesn’t delete your content, though a 2018 viral tweet made it seem like the company might. What happened is that someone purchased movies in one country and couldn’t re-download the identical movies in another. This is still ridiculous, but less horrible.)
One way around this country-based limit is if you can maintain payment methods in the two (or more) countries in which you have made and plan to make purchases that have billing addresses in those countries. You can set up separate Apple IDs for each, and use content via those IDs. You may be routinely prompted to enter the Apple ID and password that’s not your default for iTunes and the Mac App Store whenever you try to play or launch associated purchases that rely on that other ID, however.
With multiple IDs, Apple does let you change a store’s login, even if they’re registered to different countries, making an entirely different set of content and apps available. However, Apple can restrict switching to once per 90 days on a given device after you use certain iTunes features on that device, which include downloading and playing movies, music, and TV shows, logging into Apple Music, or downloading past purchases in any store.
Affected devices that can be locked to a single Apple ID for 90 days include iPhones, iPads, and Macs, but also any subscription or content apps from Apple for Windows and Android, like iTunes and Apple Music. Apple TVs appear to be exempt, maybe because Apple expects people may use them in a more varied set of circumstances.
This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Paul.
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How To Change Your Apple ID Country or Region
If you've moved to a new country or region, you can update the country or region that's associated with your Apple ID. Before you update your information, you will need to spend your store credit, cancel your subscriptions and have a valid payment method for your new country or region.
On your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch
- 1. Open the Settings app.
- 2. Tap your name, then tap iTunes & App Store.
- 3. Tap your Apple ID, then tap View Apple ID. You may be asked to sign in.
- 4. Tap Country/Region.
- 5. Tap "Change Country or Region". If you can't see "Change Country or Region", contact Apple support
- 6. Tap your new country or region, then review the terms and conditions.
- 7. Tap Agree in the top right-hand corner, then tap Agree again to confirm.
- 8. Select a payment method and enter your new payment information and billing address, then tap Next. You must enter a valid payment method for your new country or region.
- 1. Open the Music app or iTunes.
- 2. In the menu bar at the top of the screen or the top of the iTunes window, click Account, then click View My Account.
- 3. Sign in with your Apple ID, then click View Account.
- 4. On the Account Information page, click "Change Country or Region".
- 5. From the "Select a country or region" menu, select your new country or region. If you can't see "Select a country or region" contact Apple Support.
- 6. Review the terms and conditions, then click Agree. Click Agree again to confirm.
- 7. Enter your new payment information and billing address, then click Continue.
From your Apple ID account page
- 1. Sign in to your Apple ID account page.
- 2. Scroll to the Account section, then click Edit.
- 3. From the Country/Region menu, select your new country or region.
- 4. When asked if you want to change your country or region, click "Continue to update".
- 5. Enter your new payment information and your billing address, then click Save. You have to enter a valid payment method for your new country or region.