Skip to main content

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

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.

Recommended Videos

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.

Patrick Hearn
Patrick Hearn writes about smart home technology like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, smart light bulbs, and more. If it's a…
Despite the controversy, Apple is bringing AI summaries to the App Store
Summarized notifications on Apple iPad mini with A17 Pro.

After all the trouble caused by Apple's AI summaries for news apps like the BBC and the New York Times, Apple is coming back for more. The company has announced that "review summaries" are officially coming to the App Store, aiming to squish the most common points from hundreds or thousands of reviews into one AI-generated summary.

First spotted by Macworld, Apple has announced the coming feature on its developer site. The beta will start in iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 as part of a phased rollout, beginning with English-only summaries for a limited number of apps.

Read more
The new iPad is a missed opportunity for Apple to go bold
Distorted 2025 iPad.

This week, Apple introduced the iPad Air (2025). However, less attention was given to a new version of the regular iPad, which was also announced. If you missed this additional news, that’s understandable. This latest version wasn’t so much announced as it simply appeared on the Apple online store.

The 11th-generation iPad wasn’t even worthy of a press release, which says a lot. Even the latest iPad mini, another tablet Apple hasn’t shown much love in recent years, received a press release when it was announced in October.

Read more
Apple will let parents share kids’ age and revamp ratings to protect them
Family Sharing dashboard on an iPhone.

Over the past couple of years, the debate around digital safety of children has reached a new high. Australia, for example, aims to ban social media for everyone under the age of 16 years. But enforcing such rules is anything but a cakewalk.

According to research by the country’s online safety regulator, most children are able to easily bypass the age limit rules. What about identity checks using nationally-validated documents? As per experts, that would pose a serious privacy risk, especially given the poor record of social media companies.

Read more