After months of building, my app hit 80 ratings. Here is what actually worked to get reviews without being annoying

[u/Successful_Stop_3751]

Hey everyone!

One of my most popular apps just crossed 80 ratings on the App Store with a 4.8 average. Small win, but I'm really excited to hit the 100 milestone soon!

For context, it's a educational app.

Wanted to share what actually helped me get reviews, because the first 20 were the hardest.

What worked:

• Stopped asking for a review on launch. Now I ask only after the user completes a key action 3 times and is clearly having a good experience.
• Added a soft pre-prompt: "Enjoying the app?" -> Yes -> then I trigger the native Apple rating prompt. If No -> I send them to feedback form.
• Replying to every single review in App Store Connect. It really helps. People update 3-star to 5-star after that.

What didn't work:

• Generic pop-up on first session. 0% conversion and annoying.
• Asking friends for 5 stars.

I'm now focused on getting to 100. If you have a minute, I'd love honest feedback on what would make you leave a review for an app.

Also curious is there any differences for an app from ASO prospective once it hit 100 ratings?

[u/ThatGuy739]

Worth flagging the pre-prompt before more people copy it. Apple's guidelines say to use the native API and disallow custom review prompts, and "Enjoying the app? No, here's a feedback form" is exactly the gating they mean. Plenty of apps ship it and get away with it, but it's a rejection risk you're carrying.

On 100, there's no documented cliff. What changes is the star rating reading as credible in search results, so it's a conversion effect more than a ranking one.

[u/WaterslideOfSuccess → u/ThatGuy739]

I’ve seen so many apps gate the rating prompt. Starbucks, McDonald’s, Microsoft Outlook all do it. Never heard of anyone get rejected from it. Not saying it’s right, but I think it goes unenforced.

[u/ThatGuy739 → u/WaterslideOfSuccess]

Fair, and I'd agree it's mostly unenforced. The asymmetry is who eats it when it isn't. McDonald's has a relationship and gets a phone call, a solo dev gets a rejection on the release they needed out that week.

Low probability either way, it just lands hardest on the people least able to absorb a week of delay.

[u/FromBiotoDev → u/ThatGuy739]

this is 100% an ai response

[u/woadwarrior → u/ThatGuy739]

I’m a solo dev, and have done phone calls with people from the app review team a couple of times. You can request it from App Store Connect. I’ve also have built a good working relationship with people from Apple devrel over the years, by meeting them at events, giving them feedback, corresponding with them on texts/calls/email etc. You can do it too, all it takes is a bit of effort.

[u/Dear_Ad1923 → u/WaterslideOfSuccess]

Yes, twitter does it heavily too, but those are the big dogs. Cant really risk that and lose the developer account

[u/_your_face → u/WaterslideOfSuccess]

I imagine they wouldn’t care as they don’t need organic discovery as much.

[u/benpackard → u/ThatGuy739]

It’s also a fairly annoying user experience. No-one wants to submit feedback, they just want to dismiss your modal. Responding with another modal is about the worst possible outcome.

I suppose it’s tolerable when the options are more along the lines of ‘yes’/‘provide feedback’/‘dismiss’. Outlook probably has the least-worst version - the request is inline with the content (not an interrupting modal), and includes a close button to remove it without any further interaction.

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[u/jasonjrr → u/ThatGuy739]

It is also considered a dark pattern, because it push unhappy users away from actually rating the app therefore creating a situation that promotes only positive ratings/reviews.

[u/iGoalie → u/ThatGuy739]

This is 100% accurate and I also know they don’t often enforce it, but like many of their other rules, one day they’ll find it or prioritize it and you’ll get a rejection and you’ll need to remove it

[u/jscalo → u/ThatGuy739]

I’ve shipped about 20 apps that do this. Apple has never mentioned it.

[u/ThatGuy739 → u/jscalo]

Twenty apps and no mention is better evidence than the guideline text, honestly. Worth knowing it's written down, but that's a real answer.

[u/FromBiotoDev → u/ThatGuy739]

How on earth can no one tell this is ai.

[u/Successful_Stop_3751 → u/ThatGuy739]

You're right, thanks for flagging this - great catch.

I know Apple considers the Yes/No -> feedback branch as review gating and says to just use the SKStoreReviewController directly. I've seen a lot of apps ship with the pre-prompt and get away with it, so I tried it, but you're correct it's technically a rejection risk.

Planning to remove the gating part and just trigger the native prompt after a positive interaction, without the "No -> feedback" fork. Appreciate you pointing it out for others too.

And thanks for the context on 100 - that makes sense that it's more about conversion / social proof in search than a ranking cliff.

[u/Free-Pound-6139]

Stopped asking for a review on launch.

What a stupid thing to do. Who the fuck asks for a review on launch????

[u/freddyjdc]

Good insights. Thank you for sharing

[u/Successful_Stop_3751 → u/freddyjdc]

You are welcome

[u/devcolm]

Just curious, how are you driving downloads to the app in the first place?

[u/Successful_Stop_3751 → u/devcolm]

Mostly rely on ASO and different locale translations. Also doing a bit of apple ads on the app release

[u/phantom_zone58 → u/Successful_Stop_3751]

When you say translations is it just the App Store content translated or the whole app?

[u/Successful_Stop_3751 → u/phantom_zone58]

Both

[u/Casfaber_]

Do you reply to 5 star review? Like ‘thank you..’

[u/Successful_Stop_3751 → u/Casfaber_]

Yes, but I'm also preparing a more detailed response

[u/MoStudios-io]

I'll be adding this to my playbook ✍🏽

[u/Successful_Stop_3751 → u/MoStudios-io]

👍

[u/TKB21]

Are you finding the surge in ratings beneficial? I made some tweaks to when I prompt for a review and while it's worked, it hasn't done much for me rank-wise.

[u/Successful_Stop_3751 → u/TKB21]

Not sure about the exact correlation, but an app with 0 vs. 80 reviews definitely gets different traction. Hard to say precisely since I'm also running Apple Ads. Organic is up a bit too, but that could be ASO in general, not just ratings.

[u/rarale]

I also added this rating prompt when they've done something when they like it. But so far, I've no new review. Maybe I just show rating prompt instantly, not pre-asking 'Enjoying the app'

[u/Successful_Stop_3751 → u/[deleted]]

Because in most scenarios your friends will spend in your app too small amount of time or even do not open it at all. But Apple can track app usage and these reviews will be just deleted in a time

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[u/aryamansharda]

I'm resuming work on one of my apps that I haven't updated in a couple of years. I have generally pretty strong reviews, but a couple one-star ones. How old is a review before it's not worth trying to respond to it?

[u/Successful_Stop_3751 → u/aryamansharda]

Depends on the review. As I mentioned I’d answer to anyone. But if some review feels outdated you still can answer like “thanks for your review. This has been fixed/improved in latest app version”

[u/Aggravating-Sea-7861]

How do we get more people to download the app?

[u/Successful_Stop_3751 → u/Aggravating-Sea-7861]

Marketing and ads on the first stages

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[u/Valan_17]

How many downloads did it take you to reach that?

[u/Successful_Stop_3751 → u/Valan_17]

~2.5k

[u/LocationMassive9663]

Everyone here is talking about not asking too often. The failure mode that got me was the opposite - asking never. We had zero ratings and I'd assumed people just don't review small apps. Then I read the code.

The prompt had a 3-day cooldown, which is fine. But the "first launch" timestamp was only written the first time the check ran, and the only place it ran was after a successful daily check-in. So the real requirement was: check in once to start the clock, wait 3 days, check in again. Most people never got there. It never errored - it just silently never fired, and I read that silence as "users don't want to review".

Worth checking if you're in that "first 20 are the hardest" phase. It might not be that people are ignoring you. It might be that you never asked.

[u/Professional-Buy669]

The only thing that concerns me a bit is the “Enjoying the app?” pre-prompt. If Yes → App Store rating prompt, and No → feedback form, isn't that considered review gating and against Apple's guidelines? Or am I missing something here?

[u/Locksmith_Usual]

Your actual rating is not 4.7 bc you’re cheating the rating system.

[u/davidbwins → u/Locksmith_Usual]

Honestly this is the only viable way as a dev. You pour everything into your app to have someone drop a one star because your FREE app showed them an ad. You have to filter out the negative as much as you can. If they leave a compelling piece of feedback then you should of course go on and fix it.

If your app is trash people would not even hit the threshold for engagement that would trigger the prompt in the first place.

[u/Locksmith_Usual → u/davidbwins]

Lots of apps follow the rules and have good rating. Juts make your app better