Opening App Store for Ratings on iOS and Android

Sometimes you want to ask your users to rate your application. There are several components out there that will open a dialog box and prompt for ratings, but sometimes you don’t want to stop the flow of your app and throw it in their face. What I do in my application is simply add a section on my settings page asking if they would like to rate the app. When pressed I launch the app store directly to the review page:

Update!

This is now easier than ever with my Store Review Plugin! Just a single line of code and you are good to go!

Original blog post

This is pretty simple to do for iOS and Android by launching a specific URL scheme. To do this, we will use two differnt plugins:

• Share Plugin: to open browser
• Device Info: to detect OS and versions

For iOS you will need to decide what URL you want to use based on the OS versions you support as each have different URLs:

• iOS 7:

itms-apps://itunes.apple.com/app/idYOUR_APP_ID

• iOS 8 or later:

itms-apps://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewContentsUserReviews?id=YOUR_APP_ID&onlyLatestVersion=true&pageNumber=0&sortOrdering=1&type=Purple+Software

I only target iOS 8 and later so I will use that item. All you need to do is replace the “YOUR_APP_ID” with your actual APP ID from your iTunes connect page.

Update! Recently Apple updated the store to simply append on action=write-review onto the end such as:

var url = $"itms-apps://itunes.apple.com/app/id{appId}?action=write-review";

From the looks of it this works all the way back to iOS 8.

For Android, you will need the URL of your app on Google Play:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=YOUR_APP_ID

The Code! Let’s do this

It is actually really simple now:

var url = string.Empty;
var appId = string.Empty;

if(CrossDeviceInfo.Current.Platform == Platform.iOS)
{
    appId = "your_id";
    url = $"itms-apps://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewContentsUserReviews?id={appId}&onlyLatestVersion=true&pageNumber=0&sortOrdering=1&type=Purple+Software"
}
else if(CrossDeviceInfo.Current.Platform == Platform.Android)
{
    appId = "your_id";
    url = $"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id={appId}"
}

if(string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(url))
  return;

await CrossShare.Current.OpenBrowser(url, new BrowserOptions
{
    UseSafariWebViewController = false
);}

Boom, there you have it! The app store for both iOS and Android will open up and you are good to go.

Enjoy!