Fitness+ Apple Fitness+ in an unsupported country

[R740]

Hello everyone. I was wondering whether it would be possible to enable Apple Fitness+ while in an unsupported country? Which settings region should I change and would I get the free trial? Thanks in advance!

 

[6035]

It is possible. I just finished my first workout class on my Apple TV and I'm from Europe.

Open the App Store on your iPhone and sign out with your current account. Now you have to connect with a VPN service to a location where Apple Fitness+ is available.(I'm using USA) Now sign in with a USA App Store account. Open the Fitness app and the Fitness+ tab should be available. If not, close the app and restart it. From this point, you should be able to turn VPN off and still be able to see the Fitness+ tab. Your rings are still the same as always so no worries about that.

So now about the Apple TV, this is how I'm doing it:

I'm using my Apple TV over ethernet. Sign in with a USA App Store account on your Apple TV. Disconnect the cable and now connect the Apple TV with your iPhone's personal hotspot. This works over WiFi. Again, you have to be connected with a VPN first where Apple TV is available.

Once you have done this, the Fitness App should pop up on your Apple TV. From this point I learned you can reconnect the cable again and you're connected over ethernet. So you can disconnect the personal hotspot.

If you don't have your Apple TV connected through ethernet, you might want to download the lessons local on your iPhone and Airplay them to your tv since the 30 minutes workout video's are 1,5gb of data. I tried this and this worked too.

I few times the video's didn't show up because of an error, so I had to restart my iPhone/Apple Watch and after that it worked.

This is the workaround that works for me so hopefully other people can use it too now in Europe.

If you're using Apple Music, and you have music downloaded offline, it will all disappear. This since you're connected to a USA Store account. I also think your Apple Music will not be working. You have to be sign in with your regular account. But once you do this, the Fitness tab will disappear.

And about your free trial question, I can not help you with that. I have 4 months of free trial since I bought me Apple Watch 6 in the USA in September.

Hopefully Apple will not read this and blocking it haha.

Merry Christmas.

 

[lartola]

It is possible. I just finished my first workout class on my Apple TV and I'm from Europe.

Open the App Store on your iPhone and sign out with your current account. Now you have to connect with a VPN service to a location where Apple Fitness+ is available.(I'm using USA) Now sign in with a USA App Store account. Open the Fitness app and the Fitness+ tab should be available. If not, close the app and restart it. From this point, you should be able to turn VPN off and still be able to see the Fitness+ tab. Your rings are still the same as always so no worries about that.

So now about the Apple TV, this is how I'm doing it:

I'm using my Apple TV over ethernet. Sign in with a USA App Store account on your Apple TV. Disconnect the cable and now connect the Apple TV with your iPhone's personal hotspot. This works over WiFi. Again, you have to be connected with a VPN first where Apple TV is available.

Once you have done this, the Fitness App should pop up on your Apple TV. From this point I learned you can reconnect the cable again and you're connected over ethernet. So you can disconnect the personal hotspot.

If you don't have your Apple TV connected through ethernet, you might want to download the lessons local on your iPhone and Airplay them to your tv since the 30 minutes workout video's are 1,5gb of data. I tried this and this worked too.

I few times the video's didn't show up because of an error, so I had to restart my iPhone/Apple Watch and after that it worked.

This is the workaround that works for me so hopefully other people can use it too now in Europe.

If you're using Apple Music, and you have music downloaded offline, it will all disappear. This since you're connected to a USA Store account. I also think your Apple Music will not be working. You have to be sign in with your regular account. But once you do this, the Fitness tab will disappear.

And about your free trial question, I can not help you with that. I have 4 months of free trial since I bought me Apple Watch 6 in the USA in September.

Hopefully Apple will not read this and blocking it haha.

Merry Christmas.

Do note, however, that in order to subscribe to fitness+ (or any other of apple’s services, for that matter) it is necessary to have a valid form of payment for whichever appstore region you’re using to sign up. Even if you plan to cancel the subscription when the free trial ends.

Also, a VPN is not required to access fitness+. Just as long as your apple id and your devices to be used with fitness+ are set to a region where fitness+ is available you’ll see the option to sign up in the fitness app. Then, all you need is a valid form of payment for the region whose setting you are using to sign up. I did it myself a couple of days ago. I have everything set up to USA although I live in Mexico, and I was able to sign up and use fitness+ without issues and using no VPN at all.

 

[PaulKemp]

Tried this. Device and iCloud needs to be set to a supported locale (USA/UK etc). And changing locale will end my current active subscriptions.

Annoying that Apple is blocking this out for us, artificial barriers I will never understand.

 

[lartola]

Tried this. Device and iCloud needs to be set to a supported locale (USA/UK etc). And changing locale will end my current active subscriptions.

Annoying that Apple is blocking this out for us, artificial barriers I will never understand.

Oh they have always regionalized their services, but they never geofence them except for the ECG on Apple Watch, that's why I said no VPN was necessary to sign up for Fitness+ regardless of your location, but rather just to have your devices and iCloud account set to a region where Fitness+ is available. Of course, if you change your iCloud account region you lose anything you had purchased or subscribed to in the previous region you were set up for, but you could still sign up and see the fitness+ workout videos without using a VPN (i.e., Apple did not restrict the ability to view the videos based on IP address, like TV networks restrict all their content). The minute Apple decided to regionalize their services and TV networks discovered geofencing, the internet stopped being global anymore. Now the internet has borders too and we're back to 1950 when countries were a lot more isolated from each other.

 

[Henriksh]

I live internationally and move every 3-4 years. To get access to the App Store for my home country (Denmark) as well as the US and the UK I have created separate apple store accounts for each country (create a Gmail account for each country and open an account with that Gmail address). Unless you subscribe or buy apps you do not need to add a credit card to the accounts. However, as I have a US bank account I have signed up to Apple Family One through my US account and therefore have access to Apple Fitness plus everywhere we move. If you do not have a US bank account I would think you would be able to pay using a prepaid Visa gift card that you should be able to get online easily (however, you might want to check that online before buying a card)

 

[ElCidRo]

I think you need to have a card attached to your US account in order to subscribe. So you can't only use gift cards.

Never mind the above. I was able to subscribe to Fitness+ on a new US region account I created, by just adding a $25 gift card.
Now I am not sure how to juggle both. Optimally I would like to have the US account on the TV and to have the AW also work with Fitness+. But keep my old iCloud account on all my other devices (laptop, phone, tablet & AW again).

 

[antKampino]

So much hustle. They are losing potential revenue. They are the largest company in the world. Do something with it.

 

[Htsi]

It’s a hassle anyway you look at it.
It is however not a hassle if you do not have subscriptions, then you can use the proper region account permanently.