Apple App Store
Review Collector

Data provenance & legitimacy

Unlike review collectors that operate by scraping rendered HTML pages ??a gray area under most platforms' Terms of Service ??this tool retrieves reviews from Apple's officially documented public RSS feed. No DOM scraping, no UI automation, no ToS violation.

The feed endpoint is itunes.apple.com/{country}/rss/customerreviews/..., which has been part of Apple's public infrastructure since the App Store's early years. The collector simply paginates through this feed and structures the response.

Requirements

The collector runs entirely in your browser as a Chrome extension. No server account, API key, or external service is required.

• Browser: Google Chrome version 120 or later. Other Chromium-based browsers (Edge, Brave, Whale) typically work but are not formally tested.
• Operating System: Windows 10/11, macOS 12+, or any recent Linux distribution.
• Disk space: Less than 5 MB for the extension itself; collected data is exported to a location of your choice.
• Network: A stable internet connection during collection; the extension makes paginated requests to Apple's servers.

Download

Download the latest packaged extension. The file is a standard ZIP archive containing the extension's manifest, scripts, and assets.

Installation

Because this extension is distributed for research use rather than through the Chrome Web Store, it is loaded as an unpacked extension. The process is the same on all platforms.

1. Open Chrome's extensions page

   In your address bar, type chrome://extensions and press Enter. This opens the extension management page.

   Screenshot

   Chrome extensions page

2. Enable Developer mode

   In the top-right corner of the extensions page, toggle the Developer mode switch on. New buttons will appear in the top-left.

   Screenshot

   Developer mode toggle (top right)

3. Load the unpacked extension

   Click Load unpacked, then navigate to and select the folder where you unzipped the collector. Chrome should now show "Apple App Store Review Collector" as an installed extension.

   Screenshot

   Load unpacked dialog

4. Pin the extension (optional but recommended)

   Click the puzzle-piece icon in Chrome's toolbar, find the collector, and click the pin icon. The blue "A" icon will then sit in your toolbar for quick access during collection sessions.

   Screenshot

   Pin extension to toolbar

How to use

Step-by-step collection

1. Open any App Store URL containing an app ID, e.g. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/instagram/id389801252.
2. Click the blue "A" extension icon in the Chrome toolbar.
3. The floating panel appears with the detected app's name, developer, rating, and ID.
4. Tick the countries you want to collect from (see below).
5. Choose a sort order (Most recent or Most helpful).
6. Set a stop condition: collect all, a target count, or a date cutoff.
7. (Optional) Toggle author anonymization.
8. Click Start Collection. The panel shows live progress.
9. When complete, choose CSV / Excel / JSON to download.

Multi-country collection

The country code in the URL (us, kr, etc.) only determines which storefront page you opened ??the collector can pull reviews from any combination of the 30+ pre-configured countries regardless of which page you started on. This is what makes the tool especially useful for cross-cultural research.

Pre-configured countries include: US, KR, JP, GB, CA, AU, DE, FR, IT, ES, CN, TW, HK, SG, IN, BR, MX, NL, SE, NO, DK, FI, PL, RU, TR, TH, VN, ID, PH, MY.

Collection tips

• Start with the page's country pre-selected. The collector picks up the country from the URL and ticks that box by default; add more from the panel.
• Empty results are normal. Many apps aren't published in all 30 countries; the collector silently skips empty feeds.
• Page language doesn't restrict reviews. Tick US / GB / CA / AU and you'll get English-language reviews even on a Japanese-language App Store page.

Output format

Each collection produces a single file (CSV, XLSX, or JSON depending on your choice) with one row per review across 22 fields ?? 9 app-level metadata fields and 13 review-level fields.

App metadata

• app_name, app_developer, app_id
• app_country_page ??country code from the URL you opened
• app_rating, app_total_ratings, app_category
• app_url, scraped_at

Review fields

• review_id ??Apple's stable review identifier
• country ??which regional store this review came from
• author_name, author_profile_url
• rating ??star rating (1??)
• title ??Apple reviews carry a separate title field, distinct from body
• content ??review body
• review_language ??auto-detected (ko / ja / zh / en / other)
• date_iso, date_raw ??exact ISO timestamp from RSS, plus original string
• reviewed_version ??app version at the time of the review
• helpful_votes, total_votes

Output files import cleanly into R (read.csv, openxlsx::read.xlsx), Python (pandas), SPSS, or any tool that reads CSV/Excel/JSON.

The 500-per-country limit

Apple's RSS feed exposes up to 500 reviews per app per country (10 pages 횞 50 reviews). This is a hard limit imposed by Apple, not by the collector. Any tool relying on the public feed faces the same ceiling.

For studies that genuinely need exhaustive coverage of a single country's reviews beyond 500, the public RSS approach is not sufficient ??those cases require an App Store Connect agreement with the app's developer. The collector intentionally stays within publicly available data.

Troubleshooting

"Could not detect an app"

The page URL must contain /id followed by digits (e.g., id389801252). Some App Store URLs from search results redirect ??wait for the final URL with the numeric ID before clicking the extension icon.

Some countries return zero reviews

Normal. Many apps are not published in every region, or the app may have no reviews yet in a particular country. The collector skips empty feeds automatically.

I got 500 reviews from the US and want more

Add more countries. Apple's 500-per-country cap is enforced at the API level; multi-country collection is the only path to larger samples within public-feed boundaries.

I want only recent reviews

Use sort: Most recent (the default) combined with Stop at time cutoff. The collector will stop as soon as it crosses your cutoff date.

Reviews look wrong-language

Country selection ??not page language ??determines what reviews you receive. Tick US, GB, CA, AU for English-language reviews regardless of which App Store page you opened.

Citation

If you use this tool in research that leads to publication, please cite the project. A formal citation entry will be added once the accompanying methodological paper is published. For now, you may reference the tool as:

Questions or feedback? Contact the lab via the addresses listed on the main site.