I’m an individual developer with a live educational app for children aged 3 to 5 who can’t read yet. Everything in the app is spoken: instructions, feedback and task prompts are voice recordings. For a child who can’t read, the language isn’t a setting. It is the whole product.
Current setup
The app is Sovice, Croatian, live since October 2026, with native Croatian voice recordings and a Croatian curriculum. It’s currently Croatian only.
I’m now preparing an English version for the US and UK.
The problem with adding English to the same app
The child can’t recover from the wrong language. With two languages in one app, a parent picking the wrong one, or the app ending up in one by accident, leaves a three-year-old who can’t read the screen to switch back.
This applies both ways: a US child landing in Croatian and a Croatian child landing in English.
The listing follows the device language, not the market. Many Croatian parents set their phones to English. With an English listing, they’d see an English app and miss that this is a Croatian app, even though the Croatian recordings are why they’d download it.
The markets need different products. The English version would have a different curriculum (English phonics and early reading), its own brand and mascot, and features for US families, such as a homeschool parent mode. Croatian families need things US families don’t, and the other way round.
What I’m considering
Two separate single-language apps from one shared codebase, each with its own bundle ID, name, brand and content, and availability limited to its own markets:
Sovice: Croatian, sold in Croatia and the region.
Wise Beaks: English, sold in English-speaking countries.
Questions
- Has anyone shipped separate language or market versions of a kids or education app without a 4.3(a) rejection? What differentiation did App Review accept?
- Does “the users can’t read, so each app must be single-language” help when explaining this to App Review, or is it irrelevant to 4.3(a)?
- If one app is the expected path: is there a way to show a specific product page per country regardless of device language?