How to Reply to Google Play Reviews, With Templates

A Google Play review sits on your store listing where every potential user can read it, and so does your reply. Answer well and the reviewer hears from you directly, may revise their rating, and everyone else sees a team that listens. This guide covers how replies work as of 1 October 2026, in Play Console and through the API, the rules Google sets for them, and sample replies you can adapt.

If you also ship on iOS, see how to reply to App Store reviews.

The short version

• Reply from Ratings and reviews in Play Console. You need the Reply to reviews permission.
• Each review gets one public reply, which you can edit at any time.
• The reviewer gets a push notification and an email when you reply, and can update their review whenever they like.
• Google's posting policy: be clear and relevant, be nice, don't solicit or promote, keep it clean.
• Through the Reply to Reviews API a reply can be at most 350 characters, with quotas per app.

Replying in Play Console

Google's help page on ratings and reviews covers the mechanics. As of 1 October 2026:

1. Open Play Console and go to Ratings and reviews, then Reviews.
2. Find the review. You can filter by date, language, reply state, star rating, app version and device, and search for words.
3. In the Your reply field under the review, type your response, or pick a suggested reply and edit it.
4. Select Publish Reply.

The same page sets the ground rules. You can write one public reply for each review and edit it at any time. Anyone who replies needs the Reply to reviews permission; people without it can still read ratings and reviews. Suggested replies are offered for recent English reviews when you view Play Console in English. The Play Console app on your phone has a Reply button too.

Two more details are easy to miss:

• New reviews are held back for around 24 hours before they appear publicly, while Google checks for suspicious activity. You can see and reply to them in that window.
• Testing feedback is separate. Feedback from testers sits under Ratings and reviews, then Testing feedback, and isn't shown on Google Play. Our guide to testing feedback on Google Play covers it.

What the reviewer sees

As of 1 October 2026, Google says that after you reply, the user receives a push notification and an email. The email includes your app's name, the date of their review, their rating and review, your reply, and a link to email you at the contact address on your store listing. Check that address goes somewhere someone reads.

Users can rate an app once, but they can update their rating or review at any time. Play Console's Reviews analysis page has an Updated ratings section that compares users who updated after receiving a reply with users who updated without one, so you can see whether your replies move ratings.

Edits to your reply don't always reach the reviewer. The Reply to Reviews API guide sets out when Google notifies them:

So an edit saying "this is fixed now" lands in public, but the reviewer won't hear about it unless they changed their review in between. Keep that in mind for the follow-up section below.

Google's rules for replies

The Developer Comment Posting Policy on the same help page asks for four things, as of 1 October 2026:

• Make it clear and relevant. Address the user's comment directly, truthfully and usefully, in the reply itself.
• Be nice. Nothing abusive, hateful, dismissive, threatening or harassing, and don't engage with inappropriate reviews. Report them instead.
• Don't solicit or promote. Google notes that users don't find solicitations and promotions relevant or useful.
• Keep it clean. No sexually explicit content or profanity.

Google calls replying a privilege, not a right, and says breaking these rules can lead to suspension of the app or the developer account. The API guide adds two points worth following wherever you reply: replies are public, so leave out sensitive information about users, and Google discourages automated replies that you mean to update by hand later.

The Reply to Reviews API

If reviews arrive faster than you can read them in Play Console, the API lets a support tool or your own script list and answer them. As of 1 October 2026, the API guide says:

• It covers reviews of production versions of your app, and reviews that include a comment. Star ratings without text don't appear.
• It returns reviews created or modified in the last week. For older reviews, download them as a CSV file from Play Console.
• A reply can contain at most 350 characters of plain text. Well-formed HTML tags are removed and don't count.
• Quotas are per app: 200 GET requests an hour for reading reviews, and 2,000 POST requests a day for replies. You can ask Google for more.
• A service account needs the Reply to reviews permission in Play Console.

Our guide to setting up a Google Play Developer API service account covers the access side. Even if you reply in Play Console, writing to the 350-character limit is a good habit: it keeps replies short enough to read on a phone.

Which reviews to answer when time is short

If you can't answer everything, a reasonable order is low ratings that name a fixable problem, then reviews of the newest version, then questions, then feature requests, then praise. A reviewer who hears the bug is gone has a reason to come back, and the Updated ratings section shows whether that is happening for your app.

When an update fixes something people complained about, name it in your release notes as well. Our guide to writing Google Play release notes covers that half.

Sample replies

These are for Trailmate, a fictional hiking app. Each fits in 350 characters. Change the details to match what the reviewer actually wrote, since the policy asks you to address their comment directly.

A bug report

"Thanks for letting us know, and sorry the map went blank after the update. We have found the cause on some Android 15 phones and a fix is in review now. If it still happens once you have the next update, please write to us from Settings > Help so we can see your device details."

A crash we can't reproduce

"Sorry about the crashes when you save a hike. We haven't been able to reproduce it yet. Could you send us a note from Settings > Help with your phone model? It will help us track it down quickly."

A feature request

"Thanks, offline maps are high on our list too. You can add it, or vote for it if it is already there, in the app under Settings > Suggest a feature. You will see its status change there as we work on it."

A misunderstanding

"Thanks for the review. Trail notes are there, just tucked away: open any hike and tap the pencil at the top right. We will make them easier to find in a coming update."

A payment problem

"Sorry about the charge. Purchases are processed by Google Play, so questions about the order itself go to Google Play. If the feature you paid for didn't unlock, write to us from Settings > Help and we will sort it out."

Praise

"Thank you, this made our day. Enjoy the trails this autumn."

After the fix or feature goes out

Edit your existing reply, since each review has one: "Update: offline maps are in version 4.2, out now. Thanks for asking for it." Remember the table above: the edit is public, but the reviewer isn't notified of it.

Pointing reviewers to your in-app board

A feature request in a review is stuck there. You can't ask a follow-up question, other users can't add their vote, and the edit that says it is done may never reach the person who asked. Pointing them to a place in the app fixes all three. It also keeps your reply relevant to what they wrote, which the policy asks for, as long as it stays a plain instruction. A pitch for your other features would be promotion. Our post on finding the feature requests in your App Store reviews covers how to spot them, and the same reading works for Play reviews.

How FeedbackKit fits in

To be clear about what FeedbackKit does and doesn't do: it doesn't read, import or reply to Google Play reviews. Replies stay in Play Console. What FeedbackKit gives you is the in-app place to send reviewers: a board, added through the Kotlin SDK or the Flutter and React Native SDKs, where they can post the request, vote for it if it is already there, and comment.

Here is how that looks in FeedbackKit, with sample data from a fictional hiking app:

Once the request is on the board, the follow-up no longer depends on a Play notification. When you move it to Completed, FeedbackKit emails the person who submitted it, on every plan, if they left an address and Completed is on the project's list of statuses that send email. A new project's list includes Completed. Choosing a different list needs Pro, and emailing voters who opted in needs Team; see pricing. Your team gets email and push on every plan, and Slack on Pro and up.

Then edit your Play reply to say it is out, so readers of your listing see the loop close too. We wrote more about why that matters in closing the loop with status emails.

If you want somewhere better than a review for feature requests, start free.