AppStore account / country switching vs. Apple Music downloads
Hi!
I can't be the only one who is driven crazy by this: it's about the app availability in the AppStore per region/country:
- Most app devs/publishers don't know how to use this functionality correctly: they think like "this app is to be used only in country X, so let's make it only available in the AppStore for country X", which effectively means it's only available to AppStore accounts which have their country setting set to this country. (They completely forget about travelers who also need these apps, but have an AppStore account for a different country.)
- This means, when traveling, one has to switch "into that AppStore" for that country, to be able to download desired apps for the country one is visiting.
- Changing the country setting in an AppStore account is not possible while there is an active (Apple Music) subscription.
- This means an additional AppStore account needs to be created for that country one is visiting.
- Switching the AppStore account means that also the Apple Music account is switched, leading to the complete loss of the Music library (while that AppStore account is active), and, more importantly, the loss of all downloaded Music (from Apple Music)
So the scenario is:
- switch AppStore account
- download this one *ing app that you can't download with your original AppStore account
- switch back to the original AppStore account
- (all of that is annoying enough)
- but then all of your Apple Music downloads are deleted and have to be downloaded again, which leads to significant battery drain (and data usage), which is especially bad when traveling and recharging is not easily possible. And this whole sequence has to be done every few days, when a new local app is needed
One suggestion so solve this would be to just make free apps available in every AppStore country. This shouldn't pose a big problem, as the "country limitation stuff" should be mostly relevant for paid apps / taxes etc...
Another idea would be to allow a "secondary region/country" for an AppStore account, which can be switched easily.
Or, at least allow to decouple the AppStore account from the Apple Music subscription/account.
This is really driving one crazy. :/
iPhone 16