Have you just moved countries? And are you not able to use some apps because they’re not available in the country that your Play Store account is registered to?
This is how you can fix it.
One of my favourite parts of travelling is being able to access content that I can’t in Australia. From a larger Netflix library to being able to the entirety of Hulu, I’m a big fan.
Practicality also plays a part – not all apps are available in Australia. This became increasingly obvious to me when I wanted to use the GrubHub and Wholefoods apps in New Jersey, but couldn’t find them on Google Play.
I was tempted to switch my country to the USA, but that would have been a bad idea. As it turns out, once you switch your default country, you can’t change it again for 12-months.
But for those of you who are overseas on a more permanent basis, this is how you do it.
- Open Play Store App
- Tap Menu -> Account -> Country and Profiles
- Select the country of choice
- Follow the instructions and add a payment method
- Wait up to 24-hours for the change to go through
Some important notes:
- You need to be in the new country you’re setting up as your default. For example, I wasn’t able to get past ‘Country and Profiles’ in Australia because it’s already set.
- You must have an active payment method available in said country. This will be the first payment method you add. You can add payment methods from other countries later though.
- Changing counties will create a new Google Payments profile that will be linked to the new country.
Lastly, make sure that it’s definitely worth switching. Financial and government apps are an important one to think about – will you still need them overseas? Some great examples are ING, ANZ and MyGov, which aren’t available outside of Australia.
Happy apping!