How to Change an App's Datacenter Region

Validated on 28 Nov 2023 • Last edited on 6 Feb 2026

App Platform is a fully managed Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that deploys applications from Git repositories or container images. It automatically builds, deploys, and scales components while handling all underlying infrastructure.

App Platform deploys apps to the datacenter region nearest to you by default. You can change the region to place your app closer to users or to address performance issues.

Warning

If you migrate an app with a database to a new region, the database remains in the original region and the app is not able to connect to the database. This breaks the connection between the two unless you disable the database’s trusted sources.

If you are using a DigitalOcean Managed Database, we recommend you relocate the database to the app’s new region. If you are not using a managed database, we recommend backing up the contents of your database, creating a new database in the target region, and then restoring the data to the new database.

You can change your app’s datacenter region in the control panel or by updating the app spec.

To change an app’s region, go to the Apps page, click your app, then click the Networking tab. In the Private Network area, click Edit network.

Networking tab with the Edit network button highlighted

In the Edit datacenter and VPC network dialog, select an option in the Choose a datacenter region dropdown menu. Select Connect app to VPC network to enable secure outbound communication with other resources in the VPC. Click Save network settings.

Go to the Apps page in the DigitalOcean Control Panel, click your app, then click the Settings tab. In the App Spec section, click Edit. You can edit the spec directly in the control panel or download and edit it in a text editor.

To change the region, set the value of the region field to the desired region’s slug, like this:

example-app.yaml
name: example-app
region: sfo
features:
    - buildpack-stack=ubuntu-22
services:
- build_command: npm run build
  environment_slug: node-js
  github:
    branch: master
    deploy_on_push: true
    repo: example/app-repo
  http_port: 8080
  instance_count: 2
  instance_size_slug: apps-s-1vcpu-1gb
  name: reactions
  run_command: npm start
  source_dir: /

Review our regional availability page for a list of regions and their slugs.

If you edited the spec in the control panel, click Save to update your app. If you downloaded the spec, click Upload File, select your updated spec, click Open, and then click Replace. This automatically triggers a redeployment into the new region.

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