Play Store Now Warns You That The App You’re Looking At Might Suck
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The Google Play Store now has an app quality warning.
- If an app has a potential issue with its overall quality, a yellow alert box on its Play Store page will inform you.
- Warnings include frequent uninstalls, less frequent engagement, and a low user count.
Generally, if you’re looking for an app on the Google Play Store, you can gauge the overall quality of the app by the user ratings and the number of downloads. However, sometimes, these might not tell the whole story. For example, an app might have terrific reviews and millions of installs but has not been updated in years, so it doesn’t work well on newer devices. Likewise, an app might have a 5-star review and a million installs, but there’s a similar app available with 100 million installs and a 4.9-star review, making it the better choice.
Google will now help with this contextual info with its new Google Play Store app quality warnings. Previously, we first spotted these in an APK teardown, but we didn’t know what the quality warnings themselves would look like. Now that the feature is live for some users, we know.
Check out some screenshots below to see how they will look:
In the images, we see three different types of warnings:
- This app is frequently uninstalled compared to others on Play
- Users engage with this app less frequently than other apps on Play
- This app has fewer users compared to others on Play
It’s likely there are more warnings than just these three, but they give you a general idea of what to expect.
To be clear, seeing one of these warnings doesn’t mean an app is dangerous or should be avoided. It just adds context to the app so the user is more informed about what to expect. The Root Browser app, for example, might be downloaded by many people and be a good app overall, but people only use it for a very specific purpose occasionally due to its focus on root access. Therefore, people interact with it less frequently than other file browser apps available.
We spotted this using v44.7.24 of the Google Play Store. If you don’t see them yet, you should soon enough.
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