Can You Delete or Edit Your Own App Review? (iOS and Android)

Yes. If you wrote a review, it's yours to change. You can edit it or delete it on both the App Store and Google Play, and you don't need the developer's permission or anyone's approval to do it. The catch most people trip on: each store only lets you keep one review per app per account, so "editing" and "deleting then rewriting" are really the same lever. Post a new review for an app you've already reviewed and it overwrites the old one. There's no version history, no second review sitting underneath.

The part that surprises people cuts the other way too. A developer cannot delete or edit your review. The most they can do is reply to it, or report it to Apple or Google if it breaks a content rule. And reporting isn't deleting; it just asks the store to take a look. So if you're a user who wants a review gone, you're fully in control. If you're a developer who wants one gone, you mostly aren't. Here's exactly how each side works on iOS and Android.

Apple makes editing your own review easy and makes a clean delete surprisingly hard, the reverse of what most people expect. There's no trash icon next to your review the way there is on Google Play. What Apple gives you instead is a re-write: because you can only hold one review per app, opening the review sheet again pulls up your existing rating and text, and whatever you submit replaces it.

Google Play is the cleaner of the two. It gives you dedicated edit and delete controls sitting right on your own review, and the delete actually removes it rather than replacing it with something blank.

Same one-review-per-app rule applies here: a Google account gets a single review per title, so editing overwrites and there's no way to stack two. Uninstalling the app does not delete your review; it stays on the listing until you delete it yourself. And you generally need to have installed the app on a device tied to your account before Play will let you post at all, which is why some "why can't I review this" problems trace back to being signed into the wrong Google account.

Both stores tie a review to your account and to the app, not to a moment in time. That's deliberate: it stops anyone from padding a listing with ten glowing reviews, and it keeps a rating meaning "this person's current opinion" rather than a pile of stale takes. The upshot for you is that your review is a living record. If a developer ships a fix for the exact bug you complained about, the most useful thing you can do isn't to add a new review, which you can't, it's to edit the one you have and bump the stars.

That's precisely what a good developer reply is fishing for. When a developer answers your review, they're not just being polite; a public, specific answer is an invitation to reconsider, and the store rewards it. If you're curious what happens on the other end when a developer responds, and whether it notifies you, [what happens when a developer replies to your review](/blog/what-happens-when-a-developer-replies-to-your-review) walks through the mechanics.

A reply like that gives the reviewer a concrete reason to reopen the app, and a one-tap path back to their own review to raise it. That's the whole game for a developer, because they have no button that does it for them.

No. Neither Apple nor Google lets a developer delete, hide, or edit a review a user wrote. A developer has exactly two moves. They can post a public reply beneath your review. And they can report it to the store if it violates a content policy: spam, hate speech, personal or confidential information, an obvious bot, or content that's off-topic for a review. Reporting flags it for Apple's or Google's moderation team; the store decides whether it stays. Reporting is not the same as removal, and a review that's simply negative but honest won't be taken down for being negative.

So when you see a review vanish, it's almost always one of three things: the reviewer deleted or edited it themselves, the store's moderation removed it for a policy breach, or the review was caught by automated spam filtering. A developer waving a wand is not on that list.

Then work with the two levers you actually have. First, if a review is genuinely fake, abusive, or violates policy, report it. That's the only path to removal, and our guide on [how to remove fake app reviews](/blog/how-to-remove-fake-app-reviews) covers what actually qualifies and how to file it so it sticks. Be honest with yourself about the bar, though: "this review is wrong" or "this review is unfair" is not a policy violation, and reporting those wastes everyone's time.

Second — and this is the one that moves your rating — reply so well that the user edits their own review up. It's the only reliable way a bad review's stars change, and it works: Google reported at Google I/O 2019 that developers who respond to reviews see their rating rise by an average of 0.7 stars. The catch is doing it consistently, in the reviewer's language, across two stores, without letting a Friday-night one-star sit unanswered until Monday. That's the job [ReplyArgus](/features) is built for: it watches your App Store and Google Play reviews in one inbox and drafts an on-brand reply for each, grounded in your past approved replies and your store listing, translated into the reviewer's own language, so the answer that earns a star bump is written and waiting for your approval. The exact posting rules for each store live in our [app review reply mechanics reference](/blog/app-review-reply-mechanics-reference).

Your review is yours: edit or delete it in under a minute on Google Play, overwrite it on the App Store, and no developer can touch it without your say-so. If you're on the other side of that fence, unable to delete a rough review and stuck earning the edit instead, [start free with ReplyArgus](/signup) (no card). Both stores in one inbox, a grounded reply drafted in the reviewer's language, ready the moment a review lands. The delete button was never yours to press; the reply that changes their mind is.