Manually specify region

[Saucken1945]

Your Environment

• mas version: 1.8.6
• macOS version (system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType -detailLevel mini): 12.1

mas Install Method

brew install mas (homebrew-core)

Describe the Bug

The region in mas formula (China Mainland) is different from that in Mac App Store (the USA).
unable to switch from China Mainland to the USA App Store
hence cannot install any application that haven't click 'get' before.

To Reproduce

search using: mas search

Expected Behavior

Get results from the US App Store.

Actual Behavior

Get results from Chinese App Store.

Screenshots, Terminal Output

Got results from Chinese App Store:

Cannot install due to the wrong region:

After clicking OK, it says "Error: No downloads began"

Additional Context

It has been wrong since yesterday, everything was normal before that.

I haven't switched to a Chinese App Store account before.

I've tried to restart, reinstall mas ,then restart, then reinstall homebrew, then restart.

All of those do not work.

Need help, thanks!

[chris-araman]

This is fallout from #442 and #443.

As of 1.8.6, mas now queries the App Store based on the user's region set in macOS. Users that want to manage apps from other regions don't yet have a way to pass that region on the command line. As a workaround, @Saucken1945, you should be able to temporarily select the region of the apps you want to maintain in System Preferences, Language & Region, General, Region.

Moving forward, I propose we add an optional command line flag --region [region-code] where region-code is a one of Apple's supported two-letter region codes (similar to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2). We would make an allowance that the code will be handled in a case-insensitive manner. If --region is not provided, we will continue to default to the user's selected region in System Preferences.

For example:

mas --region US ...
mas --region us ...
mas --region DE ...
mas --region CN ...

(The term "country" is imprecise, because not all recognized regions are countries, but the iTunes Search API still uses the token country as a query parameter.)

@phatblat, does that sound reasonable to you?

[rgoldberg]

See #75 for a related mas region command to set the region of the Mac App Store (and/or the macOS user).

[rgoldberg]

On macOS 10.15+, mas 1.9.0+ will use the Mac App Store region throughout its code instead of using the macOS region in some places. There is now less of a need for a --region option.