How to Sort App Store Reviews on Your iPhone or iPad

Starting with iOS 11.3, Apple is providing users the ability to easily sort through app store reviews of any app. Many of the apps present in the app store have a long history and it is difficult to narrow down the reviews that are most relevant to your search. Prior to iOS 11.3, the review sorting feature was not available in iOS 11.

RELATED: Here’s Everything That is Coming in iOS 11.3 and Why it Matters

Apple has categorized the reviews into four broad categories. These are

• Most Helpful
• Most Favorable
• Most Critical and
• Most Recent

The favorable, critical and the recent categories are pretty much self explanatory. The most helpful category is interesting. It essentially draws inferences from other people’s feedback of an app’s review. This shows only the reviews that have received the most helpful feedback from other users.

How To Get to The Sort Review Settings in the App Store

If you are browsing the App store and exploring a potential app that you want to purchase, start with the most helpful category of reviews. This category is set by default.

In order to use this new feature in the app store, start by tapping on “See All” under the Ratings & Reviews section for any given app in the app store.

It is good to see these new changes that improves the transparency around an app rating by making it more accessible to users.

Over the fast few years, we have come across many stories where a poorly developed app with hardly any intrinsic value shows a history full of 5 star ratings.

RELATED: Apple App Store Scams – What You Should Know

When you closely examine the language associated with the feedback for the app, it becomes clear that there is some crazy manipulation going on with the ratings.

Some of these apps are essentially scams that target users by auto-renewal of subscription fees and worthless in app purchases.

App Store Changes in iOS 11.3

The other welcome changes to the app store that have been introduced with iOS 11.3 are the ability to see the latest version of an app as well as the size requirements.

Beginning with iOS 11.3, you will also see notifications from App store when newer version of an app that you currently have on your device is auto updated on your device.

The new iOS also carries forward the list of changes that were introduced with the original iOS 11 related to app store functionality.

These include the options to switch off video play in the app store, in-app ratings and feedback and the ability to offload apps in order to optimize storage on your idevice.

RELATED: How to Use the New App Store in iOS 11

iOS 11.3 is currently in beta testing and will be made available in early spring this year according to Apple.

What are some of the new changes that you like in iOS 11.3 based on your reading or your experience?