Re-downloading apps purchased in a different country?
Solution 1:
You can not transfer your Canadian account purchases (credentials) to a new account in Norway.
You have to log in to your Canadian account to retrieve your purchases. Your credit card is not relevant since you will not be purchasing new stuff.
You can create new (additional) account in Norway for new purchases.
I would not want the hassle of switching the country setting back and forth all the time.
If it is hassle for you switching the Store ID's then I have no solution for you.
Solution 2:
I was pretty much in the same situation as you and got the same answers from iTunes support. Like you, I did not want to manage two Apple IDs. So finally I just switched countries.
Here is what I did:
- I went to my purchased history before changing the stores and made a screenshot of everything I own (10 pages for iOS and two for OS X).
- After switching countries, all the apps that I purchased are gone from the purchased list and if I search for an app that I previously bought, instead of getting the cloud icon I just get the price tag.
- However if you click Buy it will ask you for your password, think for a few seconds and you will get a message, something like "you previously bought this app so now it's free" and you won't be charged.
As long as you know what you have purchased in the past, you can get in now for free.
Solution 3:
Another solution I've seen proposed is the following:
Create separate Apple IDs, one for each country whose store you have apps in. Eg.
On your Mac, create separate user accounts, one for each of your Apple IDs. Eg.
- Bob US
- Bob CA
Make sure each account is set up with iCloud enabled on their respective Apple IDs. This should enable updates of your Mac apps.
Move your iTunes library to a common location on your computer, out of your home directory. Eg. /Users. Make sure that all of your user accounts have full access permissions to the moved iTunes library (eg. by doing Get Info on the library and setting its permissions to Read & Write for Everyone).
Log into each of your user accounts, start iTunes while holding Option (Alt). This will allow you to select an alternative location for your iTunes library. Find the library you just moved. Do this for each of your user accounts, linking them to the same iTunes library. Make sure each of your user accounts has iTunes started and logged into the store with its respective Apple ID.
For convenience, make sure "Fast user switching" is enabled in System Preferences, this will allow you to quickly switch between your accounts from the menu bar.
Now, to sync your apps, switch to each of your accounts and open iTunes. Finally, sync iTunes to your devices. Note however that you must close iTunes in each account before you switch to the next; you should only have one iTunes open on this shared library at a time.
It's still a bit cludgy, but updates do work and it's much better than logging in and out of all your Apple IDs all the time or switching Billing Address all the time (which often isn't even possible).
Here's to hoping Apple will at some point in the near future become marginally sensible and join the community of global thinkers.