Developers will soon be able to reply to your mean app reviews

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You'll soon be able to turn off app review requests.
Photo: Apple

Apple is planning to make big changes to the way iOS and Mac users leave reviews for developers.

With the release of iOS 10.3 beta 1 and macOS 10.12.4 beta 1 this morning, Apple introduced two highly requested features for the developer community: a standardized method to ask for reviews, and a way for developers to reply to individual reviews.

“When iOS 10.3 ships to customers, you will be able to respond to customer reviews on the App Store in a way that is available for all customers to see,” Apple told developers in its new guidelines. “This feature will also be available on the Mac App Store.”

iOS 10.3 introduces a new API called SKStoreReviewController that allows developers to ask users to rate or review an app while they’re using it. This allows users to drop a review without being taken to the App Store.

To make requests for reviews less annoying, Apple is also including a new setting that lets you turn off in-app ratings and reviews so you never get those annoying pop-ups. It’s not clear what Apple’s alerts for reviews will look like yet.

The new reviews features are expected to launch in the coming weeks once iOS 10.3 is ready for the public.

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