How to Localize for Arabic in the App Store

Apple's keyword reference allows 100 bytes, not 100 characters. Counted as UTF-8, the example below contains 1 one-byte and 46 two-byte characters (separators excluded). At two bytes a letter the field holds at most 50 letters of keywords, commas included. The words below are a hypothetical keyword list for a habit tracker called Streakly; they are illustrations, not validated search terms, and each has at least three characters.

Joined with commas and no spaces after them, the field is:

العادات,تتبع العادات,الأهداف,تذكير,تحفيز,روتين,انضباط

That is 53 characters and 99 bytes: 93 bytes of keywords plus 6 commas, leaving 1 of the 100 bytes free. The byte counts assume UTF-8; confirm the final count in App Store Connect before you save.

Not one storefront in Apple's table has Arabic as its default. That is a useful fact for planning: until you add the ar locale, the listing in these storefronts falls back to the next most relevant localization or the primary language, which is typically not Arabic. Adding Arabic is therefore a deliberate act, not a replacement of a default.

Six of the 16 also list French (French): Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. Pick the pair that matches your audience, because each is a separate field with its own 100-byte budget. For the largest three, see Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

The table never makes Arabic the default. It adds Arabic as an extra language in 16: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, United States and Yemen. The default next to it is English (U.K.) in 15 and English (US) in one.

Arabic is written right to left. Apple's keyword reference says nothing about text direction, so check the field after pasting a mixed list. The locale shortcode Apple gives is ar-SA.

Arabic letters take two bytes each, which is the same cost as Greek and Cyrillic; see Greek and Russian. The example field uses seven keywords, with a space only inside one phrase. Apple does not document how it handles the definite article prefix (al-), so test a keyword both with and without it.

LocalASO checks keywords in 52 App Store storefronts, each in the storefront's local language, so you can compare your Arabic candidates with the English ones in one place. Keywords, ranks and listings stay in a database on your Mac. LocalASO is a one-time $29 purchase and the app needs a license key to run; the setup is in the localization docs and the price is on the pricing page. To test the field you just built, use the keyword field checker, or browse every language page. Neighboring languages: French, Hebrew, Russian, Greek, Hindi.