Google confirms Play Store bug causing review drops, fix coming May 5th

Since around April 21, Google Play apps have been seeing a pretty significant drop in ratings and reviews. We're talking 60 to 80 percent decreases in some cases. This is happening across the board, not just to a few apps. Google has now confirmed the issue and said a fix is coming on the day this article is published (May 5th, 2026).

What’s happening to Google Play ratings system

Multiple developers started posting about the issue on Reddit around a week ago. One developer wrote on r/googleplayconsole that their app normally gets around 60 reviews per day, but in the last week, it plummeted to around 10. Their daily active users and downloads both looked normal, so there was no clear cause on their end.

Another developer posted on r/AppBusiness saying they historically collected 30 to 60 reviews per day when their analytics showed 300 review prompt triggers. Over the past week, they saw a significant drop in recorded reviews on Google Play Console, even though their analytics confirmed the trigger count per day remained completely stable. The prompts were definitely still firing.

A third developer reported on r/androiddev that their game lost roughly 50 percent of Google Play traffic almost overnight back in June 2024, but the recent April 21 issue appears separate and is affecting many more developers simultaneously.

Google Play review volume data we're observing on our end

We've had AppFollow customers ask whether this is connected to our data collection. AppFollow is working fine. The same lower volumes show up in Google Play Console, which means AppFollow is reflecting what Google Play is currently making available. We're pulling the data correctly, Google is just providing way less of it.

The in-app review API seems particularly broken. Developers are reporting that when they call ReviewManager.launchReviewFlow, the API reports success, but no review dialog shows up for users. One developer filed an issue in Google's tracker with detailed logs showing the service binds, returns launch info, and unbinds within around 19 milliseconds with no UI and no error.

The developer wrote that starting April 21, 2026, their in-app review prompt stopped displaying to users. The SDK reports success on every call, but no dialog appears. Since then, their incoming Play Store rating volume dropped significantly, which strongly suggests the in-app review flow is broken or being silently suppressed rather than a normal quota fluctuation.

When we asked Google about this, they responded, confirming that this is indeed an issue. They’ve responded to all affected developers who reached out. The company confirmed that its engineering team identified a bug in the Google Play Store app that prevents the in-app review dialog from appearing to users as expected.

The issue is system-wide and not specific to individual app implementations. Google said they developed a fix, which is estimated to roll out to all users on May 5th, 2026, at the earliest. Once the update is live on a user's device, the dialogue should resume appearing according to standard quota limits. Google advised developers not to make any changes to their app code at this time, as the fix will be handled entirely on the Play Store side.

What can you do about it?

If your Google Play review or rating volume suddenly dropped after April 21, your dashboards are fine. Google confirmed the fix is coming, but you're stuck waiting until they roll it out.

A few things worth knowing if this is affecting you.

Your AppFollow data is still getting collected correctly. The numbers match what's in Google Play Console. Your week-over-week reporting after April 21 might need some extra context since the baseline changed. Reply rates, sentiment volume, and campaign performance might look different, too, because fewer ratings and reviews are visible, but that's a data availability issue.

We're adding a notification banner to the Rating analysis page in AppFollow so customers know what's going on. We'll keep it there until Google rolls out the fix, which they said should happen around May 5th. If you're using AppFollow and are unsure why your numbers dropped, you can check in with us, but chances are it's this Google Play issue affecting everyone. You can also track updates on our status page.

This is a pain in the neck for anyone running review response campaigns or tracking sentiment trends because your data just got cut by more than half through no fault of your own. At least Google confirmed they're fixing it. We'll update the banner once the fix rolls out. Stay put until then!