Apps are the beating heart of our smartphones. They’re the reason we spend hours every day staring at our devices, but they also occasionally make us want to throw those devices out of a window. Among the many ways that our apps get on our nerves is when they repeatedly pressure us to leave a review in the App Store, but as of this week, Apple is cutting back on those annoying prompts significantly.
As noticed by 9to5Mac, a change to the App Store Review Guidelines this week will change the way that review prompts appears within apps. You can see the new rule in the paragraph below:
Use the provided API to prompt users to review your app; this functionality allows customers to provide an App Store rating and review without the inconvenience of leaving your app, and we will disallow custom review prompts.
In other words, app developers can no longer put their own review prompts into their apps. They have to use Apple’s official API, which allows users to provided a rating from 1-5 stars without actually leaving the app. Custom prompts would push users to the App Store, which was frustrating and pointless, but now users can decide whether or not to leave a rating, press a button and get right back into the action.
Best of all, the new, official review prompt can only appear three times a year to an app user. If the user decides not to leave a rating or a review, they won’t have to see it over and over again every time they open the app. Plus, once the user leaves a rating, the prompt will never appear again.
