How to Localize for Spanish (Spain) in the App Store

Apple's keyword reference allows 100 bytes, not 100 characters. Counted as UTF-8, the example below contains 64 one-byte and 2 two-byte characters (separators excluded). Only the accented letters cost two bytes, so the field holds between 50 and 100 letters depending on how many accents you use. 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:

hábitos,rutina,objetivos,recordatorio,motivación,planificador,disciplina

That is 72 characters and 74 bytes: 68 bytes of keywords plus 6 commas, leaving 26 of the 100 bytes free. The byte counts assume UTF-8; confirm the final count in App Store Connect before you save.

Every other Spanish-speaking default in the table uses Spanish (Mexico). Spain is the exception, so the es-ES keyword field is a field for one storefront only. That makes it easy to scope: its 100 bytes only have to answer how people in Spain describe your app.

The Spain row adds two more localizations, Catalan and English (U.K.). Catalan is a separate locale (ca), so a Catalan listing does not share the es-ES field. The question of how many of those to add is covered in how many localizations you need.

Apple's table reads these rows as follows: Spanish (Spain) is the default in 1 and an additional language in 0. None of the default storefronts lists it alone.

If you wrote your Spanish keywords for Mexico first, do not copy them into es-ES unchanged. Start from the list, remove words that are only used in Latin America, and add words for the Spanish storefront found by checking who ranks there. The reverse holds too.

Check both on the Spain keyword page and the Mexico page. Because the accented vowels cost two bytes, a Spanish list is slightly shorter than its English equivalent; the example below counts it. For the English sibling of this split, see English (U.K.).

LocalASO checks keywords in 52 App Store storefronts, each in the storefront's local language, so you can compare your Spanish (Spain) 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: Spanish (Mexico), English (U.K.), French.