Influx of 1 star reviews on the play store

Jacob L

Moderator (Lawsonator)
I find it very sad that there has been a sudden spate of 1 star reviews on the Play store. Most of the reviews and comments are by people who need to have a look more closely at the instructions. dontkillmyapp.com is a good resource for keeping the OS from killing MacroDroid. The other issue is that people are not seeking help in either the forums or by using the help tools and system log to mitigate any issues. I am not the developer of MacroDroid however, I am more than willing to help users to solve their issues but please don't put a terrible rating just because you believe the app doesn't work - as it very much does work.
 

FrameXX

Well-known member
There will be always some of these reviews as MD is free. If you are paying for something, you propably know what you are paying for, but with MD free version this is not the case.
 

dsnz

Well-known member
I did today a 5 star review and marked as not helpful silly comments (some I think are just spam). I suggest all do the same thing.
 

Jacob L

Moderator (Lawsonator)
I did today a 5 star review and marked as not helpful silly comments (some I think are just spam). I suggest all do the same thing.
I find this fun to do. You are able to sort by newest and see them as well.
 

MacroDroidDev

Administrator
Staff member
Now MacroDroid is pretty widespread there are many videos all over YouTube and TikTok which often show novelty uses for the app and this attracts downloads from the sort of users who really are never going to be proper long term users. Instead they may be children or non technical users who can't even really understand what the app is. I've recently had 100s of 1 star reviews from Brazil because they couldn't uninstall the app after enabling device admin access. There was a clear warning in the app about this, there is an uninstall option in the side menu and it's covered in the troubleshooting.

These user's don't care, won't read clear warnings that are put in front of them and won't spend one minute to look for the answer. It didn't behave as they expected so the app is bad end of story. I have since put two dialogs that have to be confirmed when enabling device admin access and this has helped considerably, but there are still regular 1 star reviews from people who cannot uninstall. There is not much more that can be done in this case, but where I do see large amounts of 1 star reviews for a particular thing I try and mitigate where I can.

The best 1 star review to date was from a user who stated "the developer of this app punched me in the face". :D
 

Jacob L

Moderator (Lawsonator)
Now MacroDroid is pretty widespread there are many videos all over YouTube and TikTok which often show novelty uses for the app and this attracts downloads from the sort of users who really are never going to be proper long term users. Instead they may be children or non technical users who can't even really understand what the app is. I've recently had 100s of 1 star reviews from Brazil because they couldn't uninstall the app after enabling device admin access. There was a clear warning in the app about this, there is an uninstall option in the side menu and it's covered in the troubleshooting.

These user's don't care, won't read clear warnings that are put in front of them and won't spend one minute to look for the answer. It didn't behave as they expected so the app is bad end of story. I have since put two dialogs that have to be confirmed when enabling device admin access and this has helped considerably, but there are still regular 1 star reviews from people who cannot uninstall. There is not much more that can be done in this case, but where I do see large amounts of 1 star reviews for a particular thing I try and mitigate where I can.

The best 1 star review to date was from a user who stated "the developer of this app punched me in the face". :D
I wasn't casting blame onto you. I wish people would seek help before giving 1 star. There are a lot of users having older versions of MD, partly because Google takes ages to dispatch updates, due to country and device differences along with the fact that Google doesn't update devices properly so the last compatible versions are older versions. Also there are people who Pirate the app which means they will be older versions and maybe full of malware or bugs. That's why i put the forum thread to show people how to upgrade for free while you still get paid - there's enough apps to make money with by doing nothing. Some people can't or won't read dialogs and then expect behaviour that's not possible! I'll keep making videos to help and I'll keep answering questions for people.

Just so everybody is aware, Google ' weights ' new reviews higher than older ones, so to keep MacroDroid above overall 4.3, we need to add a review every time MacroDroid updates - only takes a minute of our time so is well worth doing.
 

MacroDroidDev

Administrator
Staff member
I certainly didn't think you were casting blame.

The point I was trying to make is these users would never go near the forum or in any way try to solve an issue themselves before reaching for the 1 star. So there is little that can be done aside from trying to learn from what is being left and mitigate directly in the app where possible (obviously stuff like Xiaomi killing background apps is beyond my control for user's who don't want to read or configure anything).
 
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