App Store Connect now supports 50 metadata languages
This is a listing-side change, and a simple one to describe. Apple's announcement put the purpose plainly: "To help your apps and games reach more people worldwide — especially in India — App Store Connect now supports localized metadata for 11 new languages." That pushed the App Store's supported metadata localizations from 39 to 50.
"50 languages" is now the number you'll see on Apple's side, and it's the number Mokbi already targets. Here's the full list of what got added, what each one actually buys you, and how to decide which of the new eleven are worth filling.
The 11 new languages
Ten of the eleven target India. Together they cover the largest regional-language markets in the country — plus, in the case of Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. Slovenian is the odd one out: a small European locale added, it seems, to round the list toward completeness.
| Language | Primary market | Rough speaker base | Worth filling? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bangla (Bengali) | India (West Bengal), Bangladesh | ~270M | Yes — huge base |
| Telugu | India (Hyderabad, Andhra, Telangana) | ~95M | Yes — tech-dense region |
| Marathi | India (Maharashtra, Mumbai) | ~83M | Yes |
| Tamil | India (Tamil Nadu), Sri Lanka, SE Asia diaspora | ~80M | Yes |
| Gujarati | India (Gujarat) | ~55M | Yes |
| Kannada | India (Karnataka, Bengaluru) | ~45M | Yes — tech hub |
| Malayalam | India (Kerala) | ~35M | Yes — high smartphone use |
| Odia | India (Odisha) | ~35M | If you target the region |
| Punjabi | India (Punjab), diaspora | ~110M | Yes |
| Urdu | Pakistan (national), India | ~230M | Yes — opens Pakistan |
| Slovenian | Slovenia | ~2.5M | Only if Slovenia is a target |
Speaker counts are approximate and mix native and second-language speakers — treat them as relative scale, not precise addressable market. The point is the shape: ten additions in the tens-to-hundreds of millions, one in the low millions.
"Metadata language" is not "app language"
Worth being precise, because the two get conflated. A metadata language is a locale you can write your listing in — app name, subtitle, description, keyword field, promotional text, and localized screenshots. That's what jumped to 50. It says nothing about the languages your app's actual interface supports at runtime; that's a separate matter you handle in your own code and string files.
So adding Tamil metadata means a Tamil-speaking shopper sees a Tamil listing and Tamil screenshots in the store. Whether the app then runs in Tamil is up to your app. You can ship localized metadata for a language your UI doesn't support — plenty of apps do, especially when the value proposition reads clearly regardless of in-app language.
50 is Apple catching up, not the ceiling
It's tempting to read "50 languages" as the outer limit of app-store localization. It isn't. Google Play accepts localized store listings in roughly 80-plus locales, and has for years. Apple moving from 39 to 50 narrows a gap that was always wider on the Play side, particularly for exactly these Indian regional languages Play already supported.
For anyone shipping to both stores, that's the practical read: the languages you may have already localized for Play — Tamil, Telugu, Bangla, Marathi — now have an App Store home too. The listing copy you wrote once can go to both sides instead of sitting idle on one.
Which of the new ones should you actually fill?
Not all eleven earn their keep for every app. A grounded way to decide:
- You already see India install volume. Fill the big regional languages — Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Bangla, Kannada. If Indian users are already finding you in English or Hindi, regional-language listings extend reach into tier-2 and tier-3 audiences who browse in their own language.
- You want the Pakistani market. Urdu is the one addition here that opens a whole new country-level market rather than a regional slice. If Pakistan is on your map, this is the strongest bet of the eleven.
- You target Slovenia specifically. Then add Slovenian. Otherwise it's completeness for its own sake — a ~2.5M-speaker market that won't move your numbers unless it's already on your list.
- You have no India or Pakistan ambition at all. Then this release changes nothing for you today. File it away for when it does.
One honest caveat on the Indian additions: a large share of Indian App Store users have long browsed in English or Hindi, both of which were already supported. Regional-language metadata is an incremental play, and it pays off most for mass-market consumer apps aimed at vernacular audiences rather than for developer tools or English-first products. Match the effort to who you're actually trying to reach.
Covering the new languages without eleven manual jobs
The friction with a change like this is usually the labor, not the decision. Eleven new locales means eleven more versions of the name, subtitle, description, and keyword field to write, plus screenshots with translated captions for each.
Mokbi already translates the whole listing — screenshot captions and store text — into all 50 App Store languages in one round. When Apple adds new locales like these, they're simply part of the same 50, so covering the eleven new ones is the same single translation pass you'd run anyway, not eleven separate manual jobs. You review the ones that matter for your app and skip the rest.
The workflow is the same whether you're filling one new language or all eleven: build the carousel and store text once, translate across the 50 languages, then export what you need for App Store Connect. The new Indian languages ride along in the same batch as everything else.