MMashDiv

Country targeting

Keeping the countries you target in step with the licences you hold — where the lists come from, how to audit a live build, and what to do when they disagree.

2 min readUpdated 26 August 2026mobile, geo, targeting, play-console, app-store-connect, audit

Three lists have to agree, and nothing outside your own process keeps them that way:

  1. The countries you hold a licence for.
  2. The countries your app is available in — App Store Connect availability, Play Console country targeting.
  3. The countries your backend will actually serve the regulated modules into.

The platform makes (1) and (3) the same table. (2) is typed into two consoles by hand, which is where they drift.

Where the lists come from

Admin → System → Attestations holds one row per (module, country). The same table emits:

  • the runtime list the app is gated on,
  • the Apple storefront list,
  • the Google Play targeting list.

They come from one source so they cannot disagree with each other. Copy them into App Store Connect and Play Console rather than reconstructing them.

Auditing a build that is already live

Play has enforced its crypto policy since 29 October 2025, so this is a present takedown risk rather than a future one. For each live build:

  1. Export the Play Console country targeting and the App Store Connect availability list.
  2. Export the attestation list from your admin console.
  3. Any country in (1) that is not in (2) is either a licence you did not record or a market you are not licensed in. There is no third possibility.
  4. Narrow the targeting first, then sort out which of the two it was. Removing a country is reversible in an afternoon; a takedown is not.

We cannot audit this for you and we cannot see it. Operator builds are submitted from operator accounts, under names we do not know, and neither store exposes another developer's targeting. The audit is yours, and the evidence lives in your two consoles.

When you add a country

In this order:

  1. Obtain the licence.
  2. Record the attestation, with its expiry.
  3. Update the Play Financial features declaration.
  4. Add the country in Play Console and App Store Connect.

Doing (4) first publishes into a market before the server will serve it — the app appears, the modules do not, and the review notes you get will be about a broken app rather than a licensing question.

When one lapses

The attestation stops serving the module the day it expires — no grace period. Set your own reminder well before that date, because the app going quiet in one country is not something a customer will report as a licensing problem.