The update is rolling out now, so you should see it on your phone, tablet, or other Play Store-enabled device soon.
How Play Store Reviews and Ratings Are Changing
If you’ve ever tried to figure out if an app from the Play Store is worth downloading, you’ll know that the reviews and ratings are not especially useful. With so many types of devices—phones, tablets, watches, Chromebooks, Android Auto products, and so on—as well as so many users from around the world, the reviews are often just not relevant to you.
But finally, Google is implementing a change it announced on its Developers blog over a year ago that will help make ratings more helpful. It will only show you reviews and ratings from the country you’re in and the device form factor you’re using.
This means that if you’re trying to find some great Wear OS apps, you’ll see a rating that reflects how the apps perform on smartwatches rather than phones or tablets. Or if you want to see whether an app is well optimized for larger displays, that should become clearer as you’ll only see reviews from users with similar-sized devices.
The one caveat in this last instance is that tablets and foldables appear to be grouped together.
These changes join an existing update that tailors reviews to the country your Google account is registered. That’s another helpful fix that helps to flag up apps with patchy support in specific regions.
The update will happen automatically. You can check if you’ve got it already by scrolling to the Ratings and reviews section for any app, where it’ll say: “Reviews and ratings are verified and are from people who use the same type of device that you use”.
Play Store Reviews Are Getting More Useful
With Android tablets making something of a comeback—and Google jumping on board soon with the upcoming Pixel Tablet—along with Samsung’s commitment to foldable phones, this small change to the Play Store could prove to be an important one.
It should also help developers who choose to optimize their apps for certain form factors, something that hasn’t always happened on Android in the past.
