App review response examples and templates

Google publishes a figure Apple does not: responding to a negative review raises that rating by an average of 0.7 stars. The mechanism is documented on both stores. You reply, the customer is notified, and they can change their review.

That is the whole business case. Below are the rules, then templates for the eight reviews you actually get.

What each store allows

	App Store	Google Play
Replies per review	One	One
Editable later	Yes, any time. Edits are marked as edited.	Yes, any time
Deletable	Yes	Not documented either way
Length	Apple publishes no limit	Approximately 350 characters. HTML tags are stripped.
Customer notified	Yes, and they can update their review	Push notification and an email containing your reply
Time to appear	Up to 24 hours	Not published
Who can reply	Account Holder, Admin, or Customer Support	Anyone with the Reply to reviews permission
API	App Store Connect API, customer review responses	Google Play Developer Reply to Reviews API

Two details change how you work.

Play's 350 characters is tight. That is two or three sentences. A reply written for the App Store will be rejected if you paste it into Play, so write to the shorter limit and use it in both places.

Play only notifies on your first reply. Editing the reply afterwards sends nothing. If your first attempt was wrong, the customer never learns you fixed it.

And Play's API only returns reviews created or modified in the last week. Anything older has to be exported as CSV from the console. If you plan to catch up on a year of unanswered reviews, the API will not help you find them.

What the stores tell you to write

Apple's guidance, in its own words: the ideal response is concise and clearly addresses the customer's feedback, keep it respectful, and do not include personal information, marketing language, or spam. It also asks you to personalize rather than sending the same generic response to similar reviews.

Google's binding policy is stricter than its style guide. Replies must stay focused on the issues raised in the comment, and you may not ask for a higher rating. Offering any reward or incentive for a rating or review is a policy violation.

So the two rules that actually constrain you: no marketing in a reply, and never ask for the star.

There is one more, from Apple. When a review contains offensive material or spam, do not reply to it. Use Report a Concern instead. Arguing with an abusive review in public has never once worked.

Eight templates

Written to Play's 350 characters so they work in both stores. Replace the bracketed parts. If you cannot fill a bracket honestly, do not send the reply.

Bug the user hit, already fixed

This was a [short description] bug in [version]. It's fixed in [version],
which is live now. If you're still seeing it after updating, [contact route]
and we'll take a look at your specific case.

Bug you have not fixed yet

You're right, and we can reproduce it. It's [what is happening] on
[condition]. The fix is in the next release. I'll reply here again when
it ships.

Only send that if you will actually come back. An unkept promise sits on your product page permanently.

Feature request you are going to build

This is on our list and it's coming. What we're building is [specific
behaviour]. If you want the details when it lands, [contact route].

Feature request you are not going to build

We're not planning this one, and it's fairer to say so than to leave you
waiting. [One sentence of honest reason.] The closest thing today is
[alternative], if that helps at all.

Saying no is not a lost review. Vague enthusiasm about a feature that never ships is.

Complaint about price or subscription

[Plan] is [price] and covers [what]. There's [free tier or trial] if you
want to try it first. If you were charged unexpectedly, that's handled by
[App Store or Google Play] support, not us, and they can refund it.

Billing and refunds are the store's, not yours. Apple's own guidance says to point download and billing complaints at Apple Support.

One star, no explanation

Sorry this didn't work for you. We can't tell from here what went wrong.
If you tell us what you were trying to do, or reach us at [contact route],
we'll fix it or tell you honestly that we can't.

Five stars

Thanks. [Specific thing they mentioned] is the part we spent the longest on,
so it's good to hear it landed.

Reply to positive reviews too. Not for the rating, which is already what you want, but because a product page where the developer answers everyone reads differently from one where they answer only complaints.

Confused user who is not wrong

That's a fair thing to get stuck on. [Where the thing actually is, in
specific steps.] We're changing [what] so it's clearer.

If three people are confused by the same screen, the screen is the bug.

Five ways replies go wrong

Marketing in the reply. Apple names it directly. A reply that ends with a pitch for your other app reads to everyone else as advertising in a complaints channel.

Asking for the star. Against Play policy, and it turns an apology into a transaction.

The same reply on twenty reviews. Everybody scrolling your product page sees all twenty at once. Copy and paste is visible in a way it never is in email.

Replying only to one stars. A page where the developer appears only under complaints looks defensive.

Replying six months late. The reply still shows, the customer is long gone, and the notification arrives about an app they deleted in spring.

What to do with the backlog

Do not answer everything. Sort by rating and date, take the one and two stars from the last 30 days, and answer those. Then set the cadence so a backlog stops forming.

The reviews worth pulling out of the pile are the repeated ones. Three people describing the same confusion is not three replies, it is one product change plus three replies that can honestly say it is being fixed.

What Uprate does with it

The review agent answers every review in your voice, in 29 languages, across both stores, and tells you what users keep asking for. That last part is what turns twenty support replies into one product decision.

Spendee moved 0.42 stars with this work.

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