Apple's hostile App Store rating system
lapcatsoftware.com
lapcatsoftware.com
Nagging the user to “rate my app” is pure self-interest at the expense of user-experience. I rate any app that nags (ie: more than thrice) me to rate it too. OTOH if I genuinely like some software I’m happy to rate it highly.
Bottom line: It’s not my job to help sell your software - that’s your job. As for trying to get Apple in on the “screw what the user wants to do, there’s STARVING INDY DEVELOPRS that need ratings!”, I don’t think I’ve come across anything so self-serving recently.. Wow.
I'm your customer, not your marketing team.
The nags seem to always come at the worst time. Open an app to look up something and I have to click to close all the bubbles about what's new and "you like this? please review us!". It's incredibly frustrating.
This is objectively false when you can go to the App Store right now and see that most apps are above a 3.0 meaning more than half rate them positively. People are happy to give good reviews to the ones that deserve it.
One problem is that before I have to close your modal dialog I have probably closed 20-30 other modal dialogs that I never wanted to have open just in the first few hours of the day. I have been using the web all day and people are always trying to steal a little bit of my attention with everybody trick in the book and the one thing that comes across as "luxury" to me is that when you don't do that in any way shape or form.
To be fair, a lot of the problem is applications jumping on you the moment you start them up. It might be that if you work for a company in Silicon Valley you think it just normal to get jumped on by five homeless people in a row as soon as you poke up your head. But sorry, it's not!
Specifically I have this problem with the Creative Cloud Applications that I only used when I am under distress. Like I use Adobe Illustrator for an unpleasant task that I have to do every three months (and have a checklist for now!) or I use Acrobat Pro because I am handling paperwork I am behind on. I want to fight off the demons in my head and get the job done, I do not want to evaluate anything about new features that have been added to the applications. If it had some sense that I'd completed a task and then had a good feeling about the app then yeah, maybe I'd like to hear about a new feature, or maybe put in a good word for your app.
Apple App Review rejected our app for having an unobtrusive message like that in the bottom of the release notes page in the menu of our app. "you're only allowed to solicit reviews through the apple dialog"
I want to see somebody punished whenever something appears. I'd like to see the EU legislators who gave us these GDPR popups treated like war criminals and jailed if they leave the EU (e.g. they've cost us billions in productivity) I'd like to see harsh treatment for those discriminatory and accessibility-violating "click on the traffic lights" popups, that stupid anime girl who is on way too many open source web sites, etc.
And I think apps that show one of those nags should be kicked immediately out of the app store.
The tracking industry's endless abuses gave you those popups, and they're deliberately implemented to be as annoying as possible to make you say things like the above.
My experience as a web developer since 1995 or so is I was able to push back on pop-ups, pop-overs and stuff like that as being user hostile. Than the GDPR breaks the dam, it normalizes the idea of interrupting the user over bullshit, it is not "annoying" anymore, now it is "required" or "socially positive" and now you visit some blog and there are three different popups asking for your email.
Less intrusive tracking is an option! Opt-in tracking is an option! Not tracking is an option! I don't track anything on my personal sites, and I push back on anything at work that'd make me add a banner as hard as I possibly can.
(And browsers could have set DNT by default).
But of course no website is going to do that.
I actually like the pop ups because they often show all the trackers used in a list of “our partners”. Many big websites have hundreds of these tracking companies listed as partners. It’s shocking. And a useful reminder of why web privacy matters and that if you don’t fight for it they will take everything they can just to squeeze out every last fraction of a penny from you and your data/privacy.
I assume you're referring to https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis. As I understand, this is a tool for blocking bot traffic and is sometimes used as DDOS protection. In my experience it's less obtrusive than Cloudflare, and it's open source and competes with Cloudflare's near monopoly on DDOS protection. I don't think we should be discouraging people from protecting their sites from unwanted traffic.
Interesting. Apps can only ask three times a year (from Apple's documentation, my highlights):
"Asking for ratings and reviews
You can ask users to rate and review your app at appropriate times throughout the user experience. Make the request when users are most likely to feel satisfaction with your app, such as when they’ve completed an action, level, or task. Make sure not to interrupt their activity. The SKStoreReviewController API lets you give users an easy way to provide feedback about your app. You can prompt for ratings up to three times in a 365-day period."
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
I originally rated any app that nagged 1 star, but stopped after thinking that maybe they couldn't control it. But it sounds like maybe they can?
I think you misunderstood the post. I would like to abolish the entire crowdsourced rating and review system. I don't want to request ratings at all. However, if Apple insists on having crowdsourced ratings and reviews in the App Store, then I think it would be better to have Apple-initiated email requests that don't interrupt the workflow of users instead of apps requesting reviews while users are using them.
Not “that would be ethically abhorrent”, or even “that would be wrong”, instead “if we did this it would cost me a lot of money to fraudulently boost my ratings”.
What ? I think I was being generous with “self-serving”, I’ve sold software for a living before, and my thought processes never went there. Never. I think you’ve persuaded me never to buy your software.
Of course I think it's wrong and ethically abhorrent. Sigh.
In the very same paragraph I use the phrase "unscrupulous App Store developers" when referring to purchasing fake reviews.
I said "Developers could", referring impersonally to developers, but you rephrased it using the words "we" and "me", words that I did not use. You're insisting on assuming the worst of me, for no apparent reason.
My point there was directed more toward readers of App Store reviews. That is, reviews of upfront paid apps, especially higher price upfront paid apps, are less likely to be fake than reviews of free-to-download apps. The question that began the paragraph was, "Should you even trust anonymous crowdsourced ratings and reviews?" That was the context.
It's really a mystery to me how you came up with this bizarre interpretation of my words. If I were a wannabe App Store fraudster, why in the world would I be openly blogging about it? And why would I stubbornly stick with the upfront paid business model when I state in the blog post that the financial incentives favor free with IAP, and moreover that it's easier to commit review fraud with the IAP model?
Riding the wave of success doesn't say much about quality. How could one even begin to measure quality?
I might enjoy and use an application for decades. That only makes me ignorant about the alternatives.
(Although in seriousness, I get this point they make further down in the article: "If we don’t request ratings from all users, then the self-initiated ratings tend to be disproportionately people with a complaint rather than satisfied users. ". That's a real problem. )
Wait until the user has meaningfully used the app. Don't interrupt the user mid-flow (a banner on the dashboard, a call-to-action on a piece of existing copy) with a modal. Provide a clear "never ask me" option.
I've seen quite a few apps taking such an approach successfully.
He explains why the request for ratings exists in the post. I'll never review a well known brand if they pester me, but go out of my way to make time for indies (including real world shops) when they do.
Let's all be a little less entitled.
There are already commenters proudly declaring they abuse the system because there is just no incentives not to.
Just because you don't like the value system of your users doesn't mean you get to call them false or fake. Good product managers LISTEN to their users. You clearly are not willing to do that, despite the now overwhelming validation of your users complaints you are receiving.
How do you know it's accurate, when you haven't used my app? That's actually not accurate. I don't have a nag screen.
But your paid for app does request a rating when using it? That’s what people call a nag screen
Yes.
> That’s what people call a nag screen
No. Where do you get "screen from?
Ironically, there are some comments here that suggest I do the something that I'm in fact doing already:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49099655
> So put a "hey, a rating really helps" somewhere in the app that doesn't interrupt?
> The bottom of the dashboard. Top of settings. A banner that shows up after a while. Let me permanently say no; none of the passive-aggressive "maybe later" shit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49102435
> Well, not covering content helps.
People read the single word "nag" and assumed something much worse than the reality. If you define "nag" as any request for a review, regardless of the form in which it appears, then you could say that it nags, but as soon as you start talking about a nag screen, covering content, a modal dialog, etc., that's a totally inaccurate depiction of what my app does.
If you write a blog post over a negative review accusing you of nagging, I would expect you to say “actually I’m not really nagging, I just have a line saying to please leave a rating in my app” if that’s the case. If you instead double down and make excuses and advocate to just ban the reviews because you don’t like user reviews anyways, it sounds like you’re actually wrong and the rating is correct.
And I’m not surprised that readers don’t proactively go out and look for your app to check themselves before criticizing you.
This is itself a misunderstanding of the blog post.
There's a whole setup where I talk about my other blog post from the previous day, Apple App Store curation, and the origin of the App Store from the iTunes Music Store. Why do you think I wrote all of that?
And then after I mention my review, I immediately move on to mention another developer's review, which was not about nagging.
If you think my blog post was about me responding to that one review, then you've missed most of the paragraphs in the blog post.
I'm critiquing the system, but people want to turn it into a simple personal complaint. That's missing the point. I've been consistently criticizing the App Store for years: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/1/9.html Of course I have personal experience with the system, and bring that into my blog posts, but I'm speaking about common problems.
In this case I agree with the system. I wouldn't want Apple start removing reviews based on arbitrary fuzzy feelings or logic.
> I wouldn't want Apple start removing reviews based on arbitrary fuzzy feelings or logic.
That's not what I'm talking about. And actually, Apple already selectively censors App Store reviews. Did you know that Apple actually reviews and approves user reviews before they're published?
I would abolish crowdsourced ratings and reviews entirely, not selectively.
The #140th most popular free app, StudentVUE, has an abysmal 2.1 star rating.
The app for my soundbar has a 1.8 star rating.
The app that my favorite karaoke bar uses to sign up has a 2.3 star rating.
Whether you live or die by App Store ratings depends on your chosen business model.
That is the risk you take when you spam the user with popups begging for a review after a specific action. If the user isn't satisfied with the result or the popup disrupt their flow, they will (rightfully) be in a bad mood when they review your app.
> Indie developers can’t win in the App Store. Since we’re mostly unknown to the public, we need positive App Store ratings and reviews for our apps to encourage purchases. If we don’t request ratings from all users, then the self-initiated ratings tend to be disproportionately people with a complaint rather than satisfied users
But I'd also say basic ratings of all kinds ... sort of stink for the same reason(s).
I'm sure it's frustrating to put the work into building an app with several features only to receive a one-star review because a user feels slighted by one specific behavior, but this is how users have been trained to behave because it's the only lever of power the users have. Writing a thoughtful and detailed feature request or bug report is often a fool's errand. Users just give the app 1 star and move on.
App developers, can signal the OS when they believe is the right time to ask for a review, but it is the OS that decides to show the prompt. The app developer has no idea about your OS preferences and I don't think they deserve a 1 star review just because the OS failed to honor your stated preference.
> When you get other people’s money, you have to be accountable to them.
How would you feel if someone showed up to your class, were asked to leave because they didn’t pay tuition, and then gave you a bad performance review because of it- and that review actually mattered and stuck with you?
I don't think the fix to "users don't want nags to review apps" is to email users nags to review apps.
That's why I said "mitigate" rather than "solve". I personally would abolish the whole system.
The advantage of an email, though, is that it doesn't interrupt your workflow while you're using the software.
So put a "hey, a rating really helps" somewhere in the app that doesn't interrupt?
The bottom of the dashboard. Top of settings. A banner that shows up after a while. Let me permanently say no; none of the passive-aggressive "maybe later" shit.
This is precisely what my app does. It does not interrupt. You haven't used my app. You were only speculating based on one terse screenshotted review, but your speculation is inaccurate.
You'll never have everyone be happy with you. Someone will always leave a one star review eventually.
The problem is that the HN comments want to make it all personal. Certainly the review I received was an inspiration for the blog post, but so was the review that the other developer received.
In general, my own app's reviews are good. I still think the review system is stupid, though.
If you thought the blog post was about me arguing with that one review, I'm afraid that you missed the point. The review was merely a symptom of a larger problem.
People are responding to your specific claims about your specific situation. Don't be surprised by that.
Some internet rando felt you were nagging them. It happens. Some other rando wanted a specific feature and was annoyed it wasn't available. It happens.
I don't think the system serves anyone, not users or developers. Like I said, the system was primarily an afterthought, a product of quickly cloning the iTunes Music Store into the App Store. Apple can afford to remain complacent because iOS is locked down to the App Store.
Developer replies are a good signal that someone's keeping an eye on feedback.
One star reviews let me see what people find annoying, and the insane ones tend to be pretty easy to filter out. Twenty people complaining about something? Signal! One "doesn't do x" in a sea of good reviews? Ignored.
I would note that it took Apple 9 years just to add this feature to the App Store.
It's not an article, it's a review. Everyone knows it's some random fuckwit.
> Below is a one-star review that I discovered today—App Store developers must check manually for reviews because Apple fails to send us email notifications...
There's an API. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreconnectapi...
IIRC there's a webhook too.
> The reviews are irrationally nitpicky, choosing one quibble and making the entire review about that.
I've got bad news on those "professional writers" from the first bit.
> Some App Store users even abuse the review system for technical support purposes...
This probably means you've made your support system too hard to find/use.
> Indeed, if ratings requests were initiated by Apple, then Apple could go as far as to ban developer-initiated ratings requests in the App Store.
They did! It's a one-shot dialog now.
App devs responded by adding a "Are you liking the app?" nag screen of their own, which I say "yes" to, then decline the real one.
Developers made this bed for themselves.
> They did! It's a one-shot dialog now.
No. Apple provides an API, but Apple doesn't ask for reviews. The app has to initiate the process to ask for a review (through Apple's API). That is what the developer highlights: If Apple were to solicit reviews from customers, then said API could be retired and apps could reasonably be banned entirely from soliciting reviews. As it stands, they're caught in a tragedy of the commons, with unscrupulous developers winning (e.g. with fake reviews, or the annoying "are you satisfied" pop-up before displaying the Apple API).
I'm aware. The API to do so limits how often you can ask, because of the incessant nagging people did. Minor correction to my earlier comment: It's 3x/year, not 1x. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/ratings-and-reviews/
The nagging devs now get around this by doing their own prompts before it. (As many shitty websites do for web-based push notifications, for similar reasons.)
They do get banned, effectively.
App developers have loads of hostile practices. Review nagging is hostile, especially on a critical app like a GPS popping up a nag when you are lost and a bit frazzled. Constant upsells (like strava), flaky offline service (Alltrails, and recently, Gaia), spammy ads ( MyQ) , convoluted retail journeys (McDonalds) all deserve criticism; and if you have many of those anti-patterns, a one star review.
If Anything, App developers are rather myopic about their “business” and don’t take their own app’s utility seriously. You wouldn’t want your microwave or sewing machine to stop working suddenly and ask the customer for a review. These are tools that need to be responsive 100% of the time.
I think that's the core, but that's also the problem with all reviews, more so user reviews. I'm not sure there's an answer.
I've been getting into board games lately. It's the same problem even where the enthusiasts who you might think would be "better" reviewers are largely doing the ratings. But for a variety of reasons that I suspect, they're not that great at rating either ... the ratings trend towards the complex games and known popular games / styles. There's no good way to sort through them, lots of efforts have been made but I don't think anyone has figured it out.
For software you probably want a feedback box baked in.
If there should be something like star ratings it should probably be baked into the app and allow the user to change it at any time.
You probably get better numbers by measuring how long the application remained installed and how many minutes it was used in total.
As a user I would be interested in the volume of instant uninstalls. For games you want many hours of usage, for simple tools a very low number could be attractive.
OT: You had me imagine a music store with in-song purchases. Give the buyer all instrument tracks so that they can adjust the volume of each, buy extra instruments and singers, crowd source new instruments. Seems fun.
It does exploit the developers, you have to provide A+ support, and often outside the scope of your app just to prevent reviews.
Personally, I don't automatically prompt for reviews at all. Only after a great 1:1 actual conversational interaction.
As a result, my reviews are a tiny fraction of the bigger players. This is the opposite strategy that works.
The reviews game incentivizes high volume, cheap software with automated review capture.
1) I'm criticizing the system because crowdsourced song reviews are a very poor fit for software. Although I personally get frustrated with some dumb reviews, overall my software is highly rated and well reviewed.
2) Some of the comments are making baseless speculations about my software, without having used it. One commenter says I'm trying to "avoid being called out for making shitty and/or obnoxious software", which is easily disproven with a little investigation. Another commenter says, "This probably means you've made your support system too hard to find/use." Probably? In other words, the commenter has never used my software and doesn't know. The same comment and others mention a "nag screen", but I don't actually have a nag screen. I try to make support as easy as possible to find, and also to make the review request as unobtrustive as possible.
I wish the comments here could focus on the rating and review system, refrain from making it all about me, making it personal, which it's not. Of course I'm personally affected by the system, but so are thousands of other developers, many of whom I know feel the same way as I do.
One person.
Have you used my software? If not, then your speculation about the design of my review request is indeed baselesss.
I did not question whether some people have a personal one-star policy. Obviously they do. My statement was about my software.
The person in my App Store review screenshot has indeed used my software. That's one person. There is no second or third person here, as far as I can tell. What the App Store reviewer meant by "nag" is not at all what many commenters here are imagining. For example, there is no nag screen, and there is no modal interface that blocks other actions. People are projecting their experience with some other apps onto my app, but my app is not the same as some of those other apps.
If someone says “hey, this guy has a nag screen” and your response is “but everybody does it!”, it’s not baseless to think you have a bag screen without checking your app. If you don’t, I would expect you to write “the reviewer here is wrong, I don’t have a nag screen”.
My app does have a ratings request on the app interface, which does not interface with the other controls on the app interface. It does not have a dedicated ratings request screen.
People are just assuming "nag screen" based on the single word "nag", and even that word is questionable in my opinion, but I do indisputably present a ratings request.
Suppose for the sake of argument that every review in the App Store for every app was like the one in the screenshot, a complaint about ratings requests. How would that be helpful? How would anyone know whether, aside from the ratings requests, the apps were any good or not? How would those be good reviews? You might defend the reviews as accurate and justified, but they would still be largely useless, because they're so narrowly focused.
I'm happy to receive 5 star reviews for my apps, but honestly, some of those are poorly written too, overly vague, or too narrowly focused, occasionally inaccurate, claiming my app does something it doesn't actually do!
The underlying point, though, is that Apple is relying on user reviews as a poor substitute to cover up its own shortcomings in reviewing app submissions. If an app doesn't do what it says, or it's user-hostile in some ways, how are those apps even getting through to the store in the first place?
Adding requirements for apps to remain on the App Store is fully reasonable, and keens the ecosystem usable for users.
Are you in favor of Apple removing everyone from the App Store?
> Adding requirements for apps to remain on the App Store is fully reasonable, and keens the ecosystem usable for users.
Apple created a developer API to request ratings and reviews. Apple 100% approves of and encourages the practice. Indeed, Apple's own apps in the App Store request ratings and reviews.
You make the assumption that it's not in everyone's best economic interest to follow the rules. People will change before they are all removed.
> Apple created a developer API to request ratings and reviews. Apple 100% approves of and encourages the practice. Indeed, Apple's own apps in the App Store request ratings and reviews.
And they added various limitations to this API to prevent bad actors, which clearly is being worked around by enough apps that it makes sense to enforce this more.
I, and I think most people, think of most apps as being published by a company that’s actively engaged in enshitifying the app to squeeze as much profit as possible, and the company really couldn’t care less about what’s said in a four star review with some minor complaint. However, a one star review is going to affect the App Store rankings and will be reported to Senior Management (who are typically the ones pushing all the nags and annoyances). A one star review is the only way to get their attention and say: you’ve gone too far with this and customers aren’t happy.
> The reviews are irrationally nitpicky, choosing one quibble and making the entire review about that. Somehow the apps deserve an overall one-star rating based on that one factor?
Yet OP thinks having a "Review me pls" nag, especially for paying customers, is a trivial thing that users should just brush aside? How about some humility and respect for the user instead of doubling down.
Not to mention the irony of nagging people to review it and then getting mad at the reviews.
That said, I know the frustration and OP surely could have made his point about better examples.
Yeah, like every public rating system. Google reviews on restaurants wouldn’t directly go into a Michelin guide either, and the same is true for Amazon ratings. Welcome to the real world.
My opinion is low of them all.
> Google reviews on restaurants wouldn’t directly go into a Michelin guide either
One important difference is that Google does not review restaurants before they open, whereas Apple claims to review every app before they are published to the App Store.
> the same is true for Amazon ratings.
Amazon, like Apple, has a major problem with scam and copycat products in their store.
Sounds like a you problem, people like them and find them useful, so I doubt they’ll be going away.
> One important difference is that Google does not review restaurants before they open, whereas Apple claims to review every app before they are published to the App Store.
What does that have to do with anything? So if google went around and checked food safety of every restaurant before listing them, you would say that google ratings for restaurant are stupid because the people doing the rating aren’t professional food critics?
The App Store review is like the food safety check but the ratings are the ratings.
> Amazon, like Apple, has a major problem with scam and copycat products in their store.
Ok, does that imply fake ratings or what does that have to do with the discussion?
Compared to windows the documentation is better and clearer, the apis are generally clearer and the sdks are better put together.
That said I hardly interact with the app store, but when I have it's been.. fine.
Beats the hell out of the microsoft ecosystem.