Get device location (only country) in iOS

Question

I need to get the country location of a iOS device.

I've been trying to use CoreLocation with MKReverseGeocoder. However this seems to return erraneous quite frequently. And I only need the country, no need for streets and such.

How can this be done in a more stable way?

Answer 1

NSString *countryCode = [[NSLocale currentLocale] objectForKey: NSLocaleCountryCode];

will get you an identifier like e.g. "US" (United States), "ES" (Spain), etc.

---

In Swift 3:

let countryCode = NSLocale.current.regionCode

In Swift 2.2:

let countryCode = NSLocale.currentLocale().objectForKey(NSLocaleCountryCode) as String

Compared to a solution based on CLLocationManager this approach has pros and cons. The primary con is that it doesn't guarantee that this is where the device is physically if the user configures it differently. This can however also be seen as a pro since it instead shows which country a user is mentally/culturally aligned with - so if e.g. I go abroad on vacation then the locale is still set to my home country. However a pretty big pro is that this API doesn't require user permission like CLLocationManager does. So if you haven't already gotten permission to use the user's location, and you can't really justify throwing a popup dialog in the user's face (or they already rejected that popup and you need a fallback) then this is probably the API you want to use. Some typical use cases for this could be personalization (e.g. culturally relevant content, default formats, etc.) and analytics.

Answer 2

NSLocale is just a setting about currently used regional settings, it doesn't mean the actual country you're in.

Use CLLocationManager to get current location & CLGeocoder to perform reverse-geocoding. You can get country name from there.

Answer 3

@Denis's answer is good -- here is some code putting his answer into practice. This is for a custom class that you have set to conform to the CLLocationManagerDelegate protocol. It's a little simplified (e.g. if the location manager returns multiple locations, it just goes with the first one) but should give folks a decent start...

- (id) init //designated initializer
{
    if (self)
    {
        self.locationManager = [[CLLocationManager alloc] init];
        self.geocoder = [[CLGeocoder alloc] init];
        self.locationManager.delegate = self;
        [self.locationManager startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges];
    }
    return self;
}

- (void)locationManager:(CLLocationManager *)manager didUpdateLocations:(NSArray *)locations
{
    if (locations == nil)
        return;

    self.currentLocation = [locations objectAtIndex:0];
    [self.geocoder reverseGeocodeLocation:self.currentLocation completionHandler:^(NSArray *placemarks, NSError *error)
    {
        if (placemarks == nil)
            return;

        self.currentLocPlacemark = [placemarks objectAtIndex:0];
        NSLog(@"Current country: %@", [self.currentLocPlacemark country]);
        NSLog(@"Current country code: %@", [self.currentLocPlacemark ISOcountryCode]);
    }];
}

Answer 4

Here is @Denis's and @Matt's answers put together for a Swift 3 solution:

import UIKit
import CoreLocation

class ViewController: UIViewController, CLLocationManagerDelegate {

    let locationManager = CLLocationManager()
    let geoCoder = CLGeocoder()

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        locationManager.requestAlwaysAuthorization()
        if CLLocationManager.locationServicesEnabled() {
            locationManager.delegate = self
            locationManager.startMonitoringSignificantLocationChanges()
        }
    }

    func locationManager(_ manager: CLLocationManager, didUpdateLocations locations: [CLLocation]) {
        guard let currentLocation = locations.first else { return }

        geoCoder.reverseGeocodeLocation(currentLocation) { (placemarks, error) in
            guard let currentLocPlacemark = placemarks?.first else { return }
            print(currentLocPlacemark.country ?? "No country found")
            print(currentLocPlacemark.isoCountryCode ?? "No country code found")
        }
    }
}

Don't forget to set the NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription or NSLocationWhenInUseUsageDescription in Info.plist as well!

Answer 5

As mentioned by @Denis Locale is just a setting about currently used regional settings, it doesn't mean the actual country you're in.

However, suggested use of CLLocationManager to get current location & CLGeocoder to perform reverse-geocoding, means prompting user access to Location Services.

How about getting country code from mobile carrier?

import CoreTelephony

guard carrier = CTTelephonyNetworkInfo().subscriberCellularProvider else {
    //iPad
    return
}

let countryST = carrier.isoCountryCode!

Answer 6

Here's an alternative, perhaps overly circuitous method. The other solutions are based on manual settings (NSLocale) or on requesting for permission to use location services which can be denied (CLLocationManager), so they have drawbacks.

You can get the current country based on the local timezone. My app is interfacing with a server running Python with pytz installed, and that module provides a dictionary of country codes to timezone strings. I only really need to have the server know the country so I don't have to set it up entirely on iOS. On the Python side:

>>> import pytz
>>> for country, timezones in pytz.country_timezones.items():
...     print country, timezones
... 
BD ['Asia/Dhaka']
BE ['Europe/Brussels']
BF ['Africa/Ouagadougou']
BG ['Europe/Sofia']
BA ['Europe/Sarajevo']
BB ['America/Barbados']
WF ['Pacific/Wallis']
...

On the iOS side:

NSTimeZone *tz = [NSTimeZone localTimeZone];
DLog(@"Local timezone: %@", tz.name); // prints "America/Los_Angeles"

I have my server send in the local timezone name and look it up in the pytz country_timezones dictionary.

If you make an iOS version of the dictionary available in pytz or some other source, you can use it to immediately look up the country code without the help of a server, based on timezone settings, which are often up to date.

I may be misunderstanding NSLocale though. Does it give you the country code through regional formatting preferences or timezone settings? If the latter, then this is just a more complicated way of getting the same result...

Answer 7

Use the CoreTelephony method as a fallback if Locale.current.regionCode doesn't work for some reasons.

import CoreTelephony

if let carriers = CTTelephonyNetworkInfo().serviceSubscriberCellularProviders?.values, let countryCode = Array(carriers).compactMap { $0.isoCountryCode }.first {
    print("❤️ \(countryCode)")
}

Answer 8

NSLocale *countryLocale = [NSLocale currentLocale];  
NSString *countryCode = [countryLocale objectForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode];
NSString *country = [countryLocale displayNameForKey:NSLocaleCountryCode value:countryCode];
NSLog(@"Country Locale:%@  Code:%@ Name:%@", countryLocale, countryCode, country);
//Country Locale:<__NSCFLocale: 0x7fd4b343ed40>  Code:US   Name:United States

Answer 9

For Swift 3 it's even simpler:

let countryCode = Locale.current.regionCode

Answer 10

Swift 4.0 code for getting the Country name as per region set:

    let countryLocale = NSLocale.current
    let countryCode = countryLocale.regionCode
    let country = (countryLocale as NSLocale).displayName(forKey: NSLocale.Key.countryCode, value: countryCode)
    print(countryCode, country)

prints: Optional("NG") Optional("Nigeria"). //for nigeria region set

Answer 11

I managed to get the country without asking for location permissions using the following approach:

import MapKit

class CountryDectectorViewController: UIViewController {
    var didDetectCountryCode: ((String?) -> Void)?

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        // Map view setup
        let mapView = MKMapView()
        view.addSubview(mapView)
        mapView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
        NSLayoutConstraint.activate([
            mapView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.topAnchor),
            mapView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.bottomAnchor),
            mapView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.leadingAnchor),
            mapView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.trailingAnchor)
        ])
        mapView.layoutIfNeeded()
        // Reverse geocoding map region center
        let location = CLLocation(
            latitude: mapView.region.center.latitude,
            longitude: mapView.region.center.longitude
        )
        CLGeocoder().reverseGeocodeLocation(location) { placemarks, _ in
            self.didDetectCountryCode?(placemarks?.first?.isoCountryCode)
        }
    }
}

To ISO Country Code can be then obtained using:

let controller = CountryDectectorViewController()
controller.loadViewIfNeeded()
controller.didDetectCountryCode = { countryCode in
    print(countryCode)
}

Some context

I realised that UIKit has this information already because everytime the MKMapView is shown, the region is automatically set to fit the current user's country. Using this hypothesis I needed to find a solution to load the map without presenting it and then to reverse geocode the center coordinates to identify the country.

I implemented this solution taking into consideration the following limitations I found:

• Don't ask for user permissions ideally
• Device locale was not considered a reliable alternative
• Detecting the sim carrier actually returns the original carrier country and not the current connected carrier (via roaming)
• Retrieving the country by IP can be easily faked using VPNs which are becoming more popular lately

Answer 12

You can get NSTimeZone from CLLocation: https://github.com/Alterplay/APTimeZones and works locally.

Answer 13

If you are only interested in telephone devices, then the technique mentioned here might be useful to you: Determine iPhone user's country

Answer 14

Here's a quick loop in Swift 3 that returns a complete list of country codes.

let countryCode = NSLocale.isoCountryCodes
    for country in countryCode {
        print(country)
    }

Answer 15

@Rob

let locale = Locale.current
let code = (locale as NSLocale).object(forKey: NSLocale.Key.countryCode) as! String?

using these code you will get your region country code and if you didn't get still then change it just go in Phone setting->general->language & region and set your region you want

Answer 16

    if let countryCode = Locale.current.regionCode {
        let country =   Locale.current.localizedString(forRegionCode: countryCode)
    }