How to: Change what ‘Country’ the Windows Store in Windows 8 displays

How to: Change what ‘Country’ the Windows Store in Windows 8 displays

To my surprise all applications in the “Store” that comes with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 does not show all applications created. There are different flavors of the Store depending on which country you are. Developers can therefore target their applications and restrict them to only appear in certain countries. This could be an issue as a person might have legitimate business trying to get an application that is not available in their country. For example, you might live in Canada but an application made for the United States might be of interest to you (and you might live by the border so this turns out to be really dumb). Another scenario is if you purchased said a copy of Windows 8.1 in Spanish and you live in the states. Well, you could default to say Spain as your country by accident when installing the OS and guess what? Your Store is going to be focused on Spanish apps targeted for Spain. Or think the United Kingdom but you live in Australia.

The good news though is that unlike Apple which restricts your store based on your payment address (think the billing address of your credit card), the Microsoft Store bases it on a configuration setting on your machine. The bad news is that if you wanted a paid app your billing address will play a role but for free apps this gives you some freedom. In order to change your country in Windows so that the store you have access to changes follow these simple instructions:

Change your location from the control panel / region / change location

Step by Step:

1. Press WindowsKey and type ‘region‘ (without quotes).

2. Click Region to open the Region dialog box.

3. In the Region dialog box switch to the Location tab.

4. On the Location tab in the Home location drop-down list select the country you wish and click OK to apply changes.