App store reviews examples (real user feedback)

Real examples of app store reviews grouped into patterns to help you understand what's driving ratings, churn risk, and your biggest product opportunities.

Notification overload pushing users away

"used to love this app but the notifications are out of control now. i get like 6 a day and half of them are just trying to get me to upgrade. turned them all off and now i miss the ones i actually want"
"why do i need a push notification every time someone likes my post AND a badge AND an in-app banner? its the same alert three times. went into settings to fix it and the granular controls just... arent there"

Onboarding drops users before they see value

"downloaded it twice. first time i got stuck on the 'connect your calendar' step because it kept throwing an error with Google Calendar and there was no skip button. deleted and reinstalled a month later, same screen, same error"
"the setup wizard asks for like 11 permissions before you even see what the app does. i have no idea why it needs my contacts. closed it halfway through and gave it 2 stars, might update if they explain why they need all that"

Core sync and data reliability breaking trust

"our Salesforce sync broke after the 4.2 update and it has been two weeks. support told me to reinstall which did nothing. we have a sales team of 12 people manually entering data right now because of this"
"logged a workout, closed the app, came back and it was gone. this has happened four times. i started screenshotting everything before i close it which is insane for a fitness tracker in 2024"

Paywalled features feel bait-and-switch

"i paid for the yearly plan specifically because the app store screenshots showed the analytics dashboard. just found out thats actually a 'Pro+' tier on top of what i already paid. feels really dishonest"
"every feature i actually want to use has a little lock icon on it. the free version is basically just a logo at this point. would be fine with paying but at least be upfront about it in the listing instead of letting me download and get excited"

Performance degrading on older but common devices

"runs fine on my new phone but my partner has an iPhone 11 and it crashes every time she tries to open the camera scanner. we both paid for the same subscription so this feels unfair"
"since the last update the app takes about 12 seconds to load on my Galaxy S21. it used to be instant. i timed it. checked my storage, restarted the phone, nothing helped. please just let me roll back"

What these app store reviews reveal

  • Friction clusters around specific product moments
    When you group reviews by theme, you stop seeing isolated complaints and start seeing that the same two or three screens — like onboarding or sync settings — are generating a disproportionate share of negative sentiment.
  • Trust erodes through repeated small failures
    Reviews about data loss or broken sync rarely describe one incident — users describe a pattern, which signals that the problem has been present long enough to change behavior and damage retention.
  • Monetization language shapes star ratings as much as bugs do
    Users who feel misled by paywalled features leave lower ratings than users who hit outright crashes, making pricing transparency a product quality issue, not just a marketing one.

How to use these examples

  1. Pull your last 500 app store reviews and paste them into Usercall to automatically surface the five to eight themes appearing most frequently — this takes about two minutes and gives you a ranked breakdown you can share directly with your product team.
  2. Filter grouped themes by star rating to separate themes that are neutral observations from themes that are actively destroying your score — a sync bug mentioned only in one-star reviews needs a different response than a feature request spread across three and four stars.
  3. Use the specific language from real reviews when writing your sprint tickets or bug reports — phrases like "stuck on the connect your calendar step" give engineers and designers far more context than a summarized ticket that just says "onboarding issues."

Decisions you can make

  • Prioritize fixing the Google Calendar connection error in onboarding after discovering it appears in reviews going back at least six months and always results in app deletion rather than a retry.
  • Add a "skip for now" option to every permission request screen in the setup flow, with a plain-language explanation of why each permission improves the experience.
  • Audit the app store screenshots and feature listing copy to make sure every locked feature is clearly labeled as a higher tier before download, reducing bait-and-switch churn.
  • Open a dedicated performance regression track for devices two to three generations old after reviews show the S21 and iPhone 11 are generating load-time complaints since the last release.
  • Redesign notification preferences to include per-channel toggles so users can keep transactional alerts without receiving promotional upsell pushes, reducing full notification opt-outs.

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