How to respond to App Store reviews (and why it changes ratings)

How responses work

• One response per review, publicly visible under the review on your product page. You can edit your response any time, and the edit replaces the original.
• The reviewer is notified when you respond, and again if you edit. They can then update their review and rating – this notification is the whole mechanism that makes replies pay off.
• If they update their review, you are notified and can update your response. The public page always shows only the latest version of each side.
• Responses go through a short review by Apple before appearing, so allow up to a day or two for them to show publicly.
• Offensive or spam reviews should be reported (Report a Concern), not argued with in a reply.

Which reviews to answer first

1. Low stars on the current version. A one-star review describing a real bug in the version people are downloading today is costing you conversions right now. These come first, always.
2. Reviews mentioning fixable, specific problems. "Crashes when I open settings" is gold: you can fix it, ship it, and reply that it is fixed. Vague negativity ("terrible app") converts far less often.
3. After every release, reviews the release fixed. When an update fixes issues that old reviews complained about, go back and reply to those reviews telling the reviewers. It is the highest-conversion reply there is – the reviewer had a problem, and you are personally telling them it is solved.
4. Detailed positive reviews, occasionally. A short thank-you on thoughtful positive reviews signals an attentive developer to everyone reading the page. Do not template-blast every five-star review; it reads as spam.

What a good response looks like

Short, specific, and human. Acknowledge the actual problem (not "sorry you feel that way"), say what you did or will do about it, and give a support contact for anything that needs back-and-forth – the review thread is not a support channel. Skip marketing language entirely; a reply that pitches features to an angry user makes things worse.

Reply in the reviewer's language. A German review deserves a German answer – an English reply to a German one-star review reads as not listening, and most of the world's reviews are not in English.

Doing this at scale

The App Store Connect website shows reviews one app, one page at a time, with no cross-app view and no translation – which is why most indie developers stop replying after the first week. The practical fix is tooling: Itsyconnect aggregates reviews across all your apps and platforms into one center you can filter by rating, territory, or answered status, translates foreign reviews in one click, and drafts replies (or rating appeals for reviews that violate guidelines) with your own AI key, in the reviewer's language. The AI drafts are a starting point – read and edit before sending; a templated reply is worse than none.