Which 9 languages does SnapPress now support on the App Store?

SnapPress 2.0.1 has localized App Store metadata in English, Japanese, Spanish, German, Portuguese (Brazil), French, Korean, Italian, and Traditional Chinese. The metadata covers App subtitle, search keywords, full description, promotional text, and What's New copy. The app interface itself uses iOS system localization for navigation strings and continues to expand.

Why did the App Store search subtitle stay blank for so long?

Honestly, I missed it. The App Store subtitle is technically optional, hidden under a less obvious section in App Store Connect, and easy to skip when you ship your first version. But the subtitle is one of the strongest fields for App Store search ranking, with weight comparable to the app name itself. Leaving it blank meant SnapPress was effectively giving up 30 characters of indexable keyword space across every locale. Fixing this was the single highest-impact ASO change for the app.

Did you write the translations by hand or use machine translation?

The structure and core messaging were drafted in English and Japanese first, then I used a careful AI-assisted translation pass for the seven additional locales, prioritizing natural phrasing over literal accuracy. Native speaker review is on the list. The point release strategy is to ship with reasonable translations now, monitor App Store search performance per locale, then refine the high-traffic markets based on real conversion data instead of guessing where to invest editor time.

Will the price be the same in every country?

No. Apple sets default pricing tiers per country and per currency. The base $0.99 monthly and $4.99 lifetime in the US translate to roughly 160 yen monthly or 800 yen lifetime in Japan, 0.99 euro and 4.99 euro in eurozone countries, R$ 6.90 monthly or R$ 19.90 lifetime in Brazil, and similar locale-adjusted tiers elsewhere. Apple handles all VAT and currency conversion automatically. The promotional text in each locale references the local currency so search shoppers see prices in their own money before tapping.

What's coming after the 2.0.1 release?

The next priorities are App Store Search Ads in Japan as a Phase 1 test campaign with a small monthly budget, then expanding to the US if the cost per install economics work out. After that comes a refresh of the first App Store screenshot to lead with the 20-photos-in-10-seconds value proposition, and continued ASO tuning based on which keywords actually convert in Search Console and App Analytics. The goal is to turn organic surprises like the Australia pickup into repeatable patterns we can scale.

SnapPress 2.0.1: 9-Language App Store Localization

The short version: SnapPress 2.0.1 ships localized App Store metadata across 9 languages (English, Japanese, Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, Korean, Italian, Traditional Chinese). The subtitle field was empty in every locale, costing 30 characters of search-ranking weight per market. Filling it took one Sunday and two CLI scripts.

SnapPress 2.0.1 just went into review, and the headline change is not a new feature. It is full App Store metadata localization across nine languages, plus the technical plumbing to keep it that way. This post is the story behind that release.

The setup

SnapPress launched on the App Store in March 2026. The pitch was simple: stop wasting 30 minutes uploading photos one by one to WordPress, ship 20 photos to your media library in 10 seconds straight from your iPhone. The 2.0 release in late April added a freemium tier, the lifetime purchase, and a hardened Share Extension, paired with the SnapPress Connect plugin on the WordPress.org directory. Sales were modest but real, mostly Japanese WordPress bloggers buying directly from the Japanese App Store.

The surprise

Two purchases came in from Australia. No advertising. No press. Nobody I knew. The buyers had found SnapPress on their own through App Store search, on metadata that I now realize was barely localized at all.

That was the moment I looked at the App Store Connect dashboard the way an outsider would. And I noticed something that changed the priority list for the rest of the day.

The problem

The App Store subtitle field — the 30-character line under the app name that shows up in search results and category browsing — was empty. In every locale. Every single one of the nine languages App Store offers a localization slot for, including English and Japanese, the two markets with the most existing users.

Subtitle is one of the highest-weighted fields in App Store search ranking. Apple gives it indexable weight comparable to the app name itself, and it is the first piece of supporting copy a search shopper sees before tapping. Leaving it blank meant SnapPress was effectively forfeiting 30 characters of keyword real estate per locale, multiplied by 9 locales, across every search query that matters.

Keywords were partially filled, but only in English and Japanese, and they were missing core terms like "bulk", "iPhone", and "blogger". Description was English and Japanese only. Promotional text was blank everywhere. The only thing fully populated across locales was, ironically, the previously-set release notes.

The fix

I spent a Sunday afternoon writing two small CLI toolkits.

The first one talks to the App Store Connect API to read the current state of every localization, generate a new app version, push subtitle through the appInfoLocalizations endpoint, push keywords / description / promotional text / what's new / support URL / marketing URL through the appStoreVersionLocalizations endpoint, and attach a freshly archived build. Authentication is App Store Connect API key based, so no human in the loop, no two-factor prompts mid-flow.

The second one talks to the Apple Search Ads Advanced API. Same pattern: ES256-signed JWT, OAuth client credentials grant, Bearer token with the X-AP-Context header. Storage of the credentials goes through 1Password CLI so no secret ever lands on disk in plaintext. The result is that "create a campaign", "list keywords", "fetch yesterday's report" become one-line shell commands instead of dashboard clicks.

Total runtime to push the new metadata across all 9 locales: under three minutes. Including the binary archive and upload for the new build: about 10 minutes. The entire 2.0.1 release was assembled and submitted from the command line.

What's now in 9 languages

The new subtitles, all under the 30-character limit:

English: Bulk Upload to WordPress Media
Japanese: WordPressに写真を一括アップロード
Spanish: Sube fotos a WordPress en masa
German: Foto-Upload für WordPress
Portuguese (Brazil): Upload em massa para WordPress
French: Photos en masse vers WordPress
Korean: 워드프레스 사진 일괄 업로드
Italian: Foto in blocco su WordPress
Traditional Chinese: 批次上傳照片到 WordPress

Each locale also gets a tailored description (around 1,400 characters in English and the European languages, naturally compressed in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese), a 100-character keyword string optimized for each market's search behavior, a promotional text block referencing the local currency price, and a what's-new line announcing the multi-language rollout.

The lesson

If you build apps for the App Store and you have not personally checked your subtitle field across every locale your app is published in, this is your reminder. It takes 5 minutes to verify, and an empty subtitle is the cheapest piece of real estate Apple lets you waste. The same applies to keywords, promotional text, and the What's New blurb after every release.

The other lesson is that App Store Connect and Apple Search Ads both have full APIs, and they are dramatically faster to operate than the web dashboards once the auth setup is done once. If you are shipping more than a few releases per year, a 100-line bash script wrapping the API will save you hours per release, and remove the slow-but-reversible mistakes that creep in when you click 27 dropdowns by hand.

What's next

Apple review takes 24 to 48 hours. Once 2.0.1 is live, Phase 1 is a small Apple Search Ads campaign in Japan: 7,500 yen monthly budget, target cost per install around 250 yen, ten Japanese keywords starting with "ワードプレスアプリ" and "wordpress 写真アップロード". The goal is not scale. The goal is real LTV and ROAS data per acquired user, so the next budget decision is informed by numbers instead of optimism.

If those numbers work, the same automated pipeline expands the campaign to the US, then to the next two or three locales where ASO traffic looks promising. If the numbers don't work, the budget pauses, the screenshots and pricing get a closer look, and the experiment continues with cheaper inputs.

The fun part of operating a small product solo is that you can ship something like this in an afternoon. The boring part — and the part that actually matters — is what happens in the 60 days after, when the data starts coming in.

Download SnapPress on the App Store →