App Store Localization for Italian: Storefronts, Bytes, Keywords

Apple's localizations table names Italian as the default language of one storefront: Italy. Each of them also lists English (U.K.). It appears as an additional language in 1 more: Switzerland. The default language listed next to it is German.

Apple's keyword reference allows 100 bytes, not 100 characters. Counted as UTF-8, the example below contains 67 one-byte characters (separators excluded). Every letter costs one byte, so the field holds up to 100 characters, 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:

abitudini,routine,obiettivi,promemoria,motivazione,costanza,pianificatore

That is 73 characters and 73 bytes: 67 bytes of keywords plus 6 commas, leaving 27 of the 100 bytes free. The byte counts assume UTF-8; confirm the final count in App Store Connect before you save.

In Italy the default is Italian and English (U.K.) is the additional language. In Switzerland the default is German and the additional languages are English (U.K.), French and Italian. The same it locale therefore serves Italy as the main listing and Switzerland as a supporting one.

Look at the Italy keyword page for the main market and at the Switzerland page for the second. The Swiss storefront mixes four languages, which makes it a place to check what is actually showing rather than to assume.

Italian uses grave and acute accents on vowel endings, such as città or perché, so most words stay at one byte per letter and only the accented vowel adds a byte. In the example field below, every keyword is plain ASCII.

A mostly unaccented language is good news for the 100-byte limit, and it makes the bytes you save worth spending on a second form of a term. Apple does not document how it handles plurals or word forms, so verify any variation you add. See singular or plural keywords for a method to test it. Spanish (Spain) has a similar vowel-accent profile.

LocalASO checks keywords in 52 App Store storefronts, each in the storefront's local language, so you can compare your Italian 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. Related languages: German, French, Spanish (Spain).