iOS in-app purchase localization: the 5 fields most devs forget

Most iOS developers localize their IAP display name and description and stop there. This post covers five fields in App Store Connect that commonly go unlocalized — and that surface to users at the highest-stakes moments in the subscription lifecycle.

You spent weeks translating your app's UI, hired a professional translator for your App Store listing, and even localized your screenshots. Then a user in Germany opens the iOS subscription management screen and sees “Premium Access” — in English — next to your otherwise fully German app. Somewhere in App Store Connect, a field you never touched is quietly undermining everything.

In-app purchase localization has more moving parts than most developers realize. Apple’s IAP system surfaces metadata in at least five distinct places in the iOS UI, and each location draws from different fields in App Store Connect. Miss even one, and you’ll have jarring English fragments appearing inside an otherwise localized experience — at exactly the moments that matter most: the purchase sheet, the subscription management screen, and the App Store product page.

This post walks through the five fields that experienced iOS developers most commonly leave unlocalized, explains where each one actually appears, and gives you a practical checklist to close the gaps.

Why “Display Name + Description” Is Only the Beginning

The obvious starting point — and the minimum Apple requires to submit an IAP for review — is the Display Name and Description. Most developers who care about localization do fill these in for their primary supported locales. The problem is that Apple’s IAP metadata architecture has expanded substantially since iOS 12, and the fields you have to fill in represent only a fraction of the fields that actually reach users.

Your IAP metadata can surface on the App Store product page (for promoted IAPs), in the system purchase confirmation sheet, in iOS Settings → Subscriptions, on offer redemption screens, and inside any custom paywall or product page you build. Several of these surfaces pull from fields that are entirely separate from the base Display Name and Description. Leaving any of them empty typically causes a silent fallback to the development-language version — usually English — regardless of the user’s device language.

Research from ASO specialists including Phiture consistently flags mixed-language UI as a meaningful conversion signal. When a purchase screen switches languages mid-flow, it introduces friction and reduces trust — two things you cannot afford at the moment a user is deciding whether to subscribe.

Field 1: Promotional Text

Promotional text is a short free-text field that Apple added to auto-renewable subscriptions (and promoted non-consumable IAPs) that appears above the description on the App Store product page for promoted IAPs, and — on iOS 15 and later — in the system subscription management screen in Settings.

What makes it uniquely valuable — and what makes it so commonly overlooked — is that it is the only IAP metadata field you can update without submitting a new app binary for review. You can change it to reflect a seasonal promotion, announce an upcoming price change, or call out a new feature, and the update propagates within hours. No review queue, no waiting.

Developers who know promotional text exists typically write it once in English and never revisit it. But because it appears in subscription management — where users are deciding whether to cancel — leaving it in English creates a localization gap at exactly the wrong moment. In markets where App Store conversion is highly sensitive to trust signals, such as Japan and South Korea, a localized and contextually relevant promotional text can influence both acquisition and retention on promoted placements.

Where it appears: App Store product page (promoted IAP section on iOS 11+); iOS Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions (subscription detail view on iOS 15+).

Field 2: Subscription Group Display Name

Every auto-renewable subscription belongs to a subscription group. The group itself has a Display Name field, separate from the individual subscription’s Display Name — and this group-level name is what appears as the section header in the iOS subscription management interface inside Settings.

When a user navigates to Settings → [Apple ID] → Subscriptions to manage or cancel a subscription, they see the subscription group name prominently as a category header. For a large proportion of apps on the App Store, that name reads something like “Premium”, “Pro Plan”, or the app’s own name — in English — regardless of the device language. This is the group display name field left at its English default.

This matters for two concrete reasons. First, the subscription management screen is a high-stakes moment: it’s where users decide whether to stay or cancel. A stray English label in an otherwise localized UI breaks the illusion of a fully localized product and adds friction at a moment when you want the experience to feel seamless and trustworthy. Second, Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines explicitly recommend localizing all system-visible strings, and the subscription group name is a system-visible string in the most literal sense — it appears in Apple’s own Settings UI, not your app.

The fix is simple: in App Store Connect, navigate to your app → In-App Purchases → Subscription Groups → [your group] → Localizations, and add translated names for each locale you support.

Where it appears: iOS Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions (as the section header grouping all subscriptions from your app).

Field 3: Introductory Offer and Promotional Offer Metadata

If you run a free trial, introductory price offer, or promotional offer (e.g., three months at a reduced rate for lapsed subscribers), Apple generates a separate set of localizable metadata for each of those offers: a display name and description that appear in the system purchase sheet when the offer is being presented to the user.

The critical misunderstanding here is that localizing your base subscription’s Display Name and Description does not localize your offer metadata. These are entirely separate fields. A developer who carefully translates their subscription into twelve locales will still show English offer metadata to users in all those locales if they haven’t also gone into each offer’s localization settings in App Store Connect.

This means that every time you create a new introductory offer or promotional offer, you need to add localized metadata for it independently — even if every other component of your subscription is already fully localized. Because introductory offers are often the first interaction a new user has with your subscription purchase flow, leaving offer metadata in English in a non-English locale is especially damaging to first-impression conversion.

Where it appears: System purchase confirmation sheet when an introductory or promotional offer is active; App Store product page offer badge text.

Field 4: Territory-Specific Pricing

Pricing is not typically described as a “localization field,” but in practice it functions exactly like one — and omitting deliberate territory-specific price setting is among the most impactful errors a developer can make in global markets.

Apple’s automatic price equivalency converts a base USD price into local currencies using current exchange rates and its own price tier system. The result is often economically misaligned. RevenueCat’s published data on conversion rates by region has consistently shown that apps with prices anchored to local purchasing power outperform those using auto-converted prices in high-growth emerging markets. The same directional finding appears in World Bank PPP data, which shows purchasing power parity gaps of 3× to 8× between the US and many large App Store markets including India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia.

Starting with Apple’s 2023 global pricing update, App Store Connect supports more than 900 price points across 175 storefronts — a significant increase in granularity over the previous tier system. Taking advantage of this requires going into each key territory and manually setting a price rather than accepting the auto-converted default. For a structural approach to which markets to prioritize, see our breakdown of the 8 most under-localized App Store markets and the foundational case for PPP-based pricing.

Where it appears: App Store product page price button; system purchase sheet (renewal price); subscription management screen (upcoming renewal amount).

Field 5: Promoted IAP Configuration Per Storefront

Apple allows developers to promote up to 20 in-app purchases directly on their App Store product page. Promoted IAPs appear in a horizontal scroll section on the product page and can also surface in App Store search results and editorial placements. For apps that rely on subscription revenue, promoted IAPs represent one of the few ways to drive subscription sign-ups from a user’s first contact with the App Store listing — before they even install the app.

What most developers miss: promoted IAP ordering and visibility are configurable per storefront in App Store Connect. A developer who sets up promoted IAPs for the US storefront and then moves on has not activated promoted IAPs in any other storefront. The promotions are simply invisible in all other markets unless explicitly configured.

Beyond the per-storefront ordering: the Display Name that appears on a promoted IAP entry on the App Store product page needs to work as a standalone label — without the context of your app’s UI around it. Short context-dependent names like “Pro” or “Upgrade” that work fine inside an app become ambiguous when sitting on an App Store page. Localized promoted IAPs that use fuller, more descriptive Display Names perform better in non-English markets, according to directional findings from conversion optimization research cited by agencies including Phiture and Storemaven.

For subscription-heavy apps, the combination of localized promotional text (Field 1 above), a fully localized Display Name, and deliberate per-storefront promoted IAP configuration is one of the highest-leverage localization investments you can make — and almost none of it requires engineering work once the initial IAP metadata infrastructure is in place. For teams automating metadata updates, this is also a workflow you can build on top of the App Store Connect API.

Where it appears: App Store product page (promoted IAP scroll section); App Store search results (contextual placements); editorial features.

Practical Audit Checklist

For each IAP in your app, run through this checklist for every locale you support:

If any row in the table above shows “No” under “Auto-localized?” and you haven’t manually filled it for your supported locales, you have a localization gap. Start with the fields that appear at checkout and in subscription management — those are the moments with the highest revenue impact.

Sources and further reading

• Apple Developer Documentation: In-App Purchase (StoreKit)
• Apple Developer Documentation: App Store Connect API
• Apple: Promoting In-App Purchases
• RevenueCat Blog: Subscription and monetization data
• Phiture Mobile Growth Stack: ASO and localization research
• World Bank: Purchasing Power Parity conversion factor data