Apple is going to make it easier to read App Store reviews

By Patrick Hearn Published October 30, 2024

A photo of an Apple screen and a close-up of the App Store icon with three notifications on it. — Brett Jordan / Pexels

Apple Intelligence promises to bring a lot of features to the Apple ecosystem, but one of the most exciting of those is text summarization. According to 9to5Mac, Apple plans to bring this same feature to the App Store. You’ll be able to see a rundown of the most common complaints and praise for an app before you download it.

There isn’t a lot of news about this feature yet, so we’re a bit light on the specific details. If we had to make a guess, the system will work similarly to Amazon’s product page summaries. The AI-generated review summaries found on most product pages likely follow the same format that Apple’s reviews will. It also looks as though Apple will generate the summaries on its own rather than using on-device processing.

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Apple hasn’t disclosed any information on when the feature might go live, but the code for it is already in the App Store API. While there’s no guarantee, that fact does indicate the launch could happen at nearly any time. For an app to receive summaries, it must be available in “select countries and regions” and meet a specific review count threshold.

If a summary isn’t a great descriptor of an app, then the developers can request a review of any inaccurate summaries. Developers can’t remove the summary on their own, though — Apple will have to intervene. It’s an effective way to prevent malicious app developers from gaming the system while providing users with an easy way to see if an app is everything it’s cracked up to be.

Fraudulent reviews are a common problem on every online platform, but Apple says it has been vigilant in removing false reviews. Last year, Apple had more than 1.1 billion reviews posted to the App Store and removed roughly 152 million that weren’t legit.

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