iOS App Store Reviews — Email or Slack Notifications

Moved from Medium. Original Post: July 1st 2022.

After having an iOS App for about 3 years on the App Store, I’ve realized I’ve been noticing app store reviews months after they are submitted, when I occasionally login to App Store Connect.

Given how valuable reviews are, it’s very important for me to instantly know as soon as someone has feedback, so I could respond and help anyway I can.

I was hoping I’d simply log in to the App Store Connect and enable the notification (at least by email), but unfortunately, nothing like this exists! I was very surprised.

So I did the usual, went to Google, and searched for exactly what I am looking for “Slack notification for iOS app store review”. From a quick scan, it all looked like paid solutions! No, thank you!

I started looking if Apple offers something, maybe it’s hidden somewhere, so I searched “get notified for iOS app store review”, “ios app review api notification” and more. I found this mechanism to get notified by email if a customer edits a review you’ve responded to, which is solid, but not I was looking for.

Apple Connect User Profile — Developer Response

I then found this post on the Apple Developer Forum, which as usual, didn’t have an easy answer. However, there was a useful data point about App Store review data being available by region via RSS (XML) or JSON.

https://itunes.apple.com/<countryCode>/rss/customerreviews/id=<appId>/sortby=mostrecent/xml

I tested that on my app and was happy to at least see some data come through.

• JSON: https://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/customerreviews/id=1482090288/sortby=mostrecent/json

• RSS Feed: https://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/customerreviews/id=1482090288/sortby=mostrecent/xml

I then discovered that Zapier has an RSS Feed Trigger. Given that Zapier lets me have 5 free Zaps, I decided trying it out would be an acceptable solution, since I don’t have to make monthly payments if I just want to use this one Zap.

So I went ahead and configured my trigger as follows:

Zapier Trigger for New iOS App Store Review in a Region

Then I connected the Trigger to a Slack Action.

I tested the trigger and got a good looking message. It literally took a minute.

iOS App Store Review Notification

As I was writing this post, with a bit more Google searching, I discovered that there is an App Connect app created by Apple, which lets you get in app notification for new app store reviews.

App Store Connect app Notifications for App Reviews

I wish that was more easily discoverable!

Anyways, if you work by yourself on your own app, or part of a small team, I recommend you just use the App Connect app.

Otherwise, if you’d like to route notifications to an email list or a Slack channel shared with your team, then it should also be as simple as this one minute Zap I shared in this post!

Hope you’ll find this useful. Enjoy!