When to ask for app reviews: the right moment, the right user
Ratings and reviews shape how many people install your app. The honest way to get more of them is to ask real users at a good moment and make it easy. This article is about timing: when a prompt appears and to whom. Where it sits on the screen and what it looks like is covered in how a rating prompt should look and where to place it.
A reminder before anything else: never offer rewards for ratings, never buy or trade reviews, and never ask only happy users to rate. Store rules prohibit manipulating ratings, and it damages trust. Check the current policies of Google Play and the App Store before you ship a prompt.
The principle: ask after a win
People are most willing to rate when they have just got value from the app. Poor timing, such as at launch, during an error or in the middle of a task, produces annoyed dismissals and sometimes a bad review that is really about the interruption.
Good moments are things the user would call a success:
- Completing a task the app exists for: finishing a workout, exporting a file, sending a message, finishing a level.
- Reaching a milestone: the tenth entry, a seven-day streak, the first goal met.
- Getting a result they asked for: a finished conversion, a delivered order, a saved booking.
- Returning after several days of use, at the start of a calm session.
Bad moments:
- First launch or the first session.
- Immediately after an error, a crash recovery or a paywall.
- Mid-task, in the middle of typing or playing.
- Right after the user declined something or cancelled.
Use thresholds, not luck
Combine a few conditions so the prompt appears only for engaged users:
- Minimum usage. For example, the app has been opened on at least three different days.
- A success event in this session.
- No recent problems. No crash, error or failed payment in the last session or two.
- Not asked recently. Keep a timestamp and wait weeks between asks.
Tune the numbers to your app. A meditation app and a tax app have very different natural rhythms.
Respect the platform limits
Both platforms provide a native review dialog that you should use rather than build your own sheet that imitates it:
- iOS: the system rating request is limited by the system. Apple documents that it may show the dialog only a limited number of times per year per app, and it can decide not to show it at all. Your code cannot know whether the user saw it or rated.
- Android: the in-app review flow likewise applies quotas and may show nothing. Do not make a button that promises a dialog, because it might not appear.
Because the system can ignore the request, never tie the prompt to a button like "Rate us" that must do something. Use a separate link in settings that opens the store page for anyone who wants to rate on purpose.
Do not gate by sentiment in ways that break rules
A popular pattern is a pre-question, "Are you enjoying the app?", with happy users sent to the store and unhappy ones to a feedback form. Policies around this change and have been interpreted differently; the safest approach is:
- Offer a private feedback option to everyone, not only unhappy users.
- Do not hide the store path from people who say they are unhappy.
- Read the current guidelines of each store about rating prompts.
If you want the benefit of catching problems early, collect feedback first on your own channel, from testers, before release. That is what a feedback exchange is for. See how to ask users for feedback without nagging.
Measure what happens
- How many users reach the trigger conditions.
- How many ratings arrive after you added the prompt, and their average, from the console.
- Whether uninstall or complaint rates change around the prompt.
If the average rating drops after a change, the prompt is probably appearing at a wrong moment. Move it later or narrow the conditions.
Checklist
- Choose one or two success events.
- Require a few days of use and no recent errors.
- Wait weeks between asks.
- Use the native review dialog only.
- Add a separate "rate the app" link in settings.
- Offer private feedback to everyone.
- Never reward ratings.
- Review results monthly.
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