Google Play
Connect a Google Play app to Sift to pull user reviews across every country, monitor sentiment over time, and post developer replies directly from the inbox.
At a glance
| Inbound: Reviews (rating, text, language, device, version) | ✅ |
| Inbound: Country of each review (derived from reviewer language) | ✅ |
| Inbound: App version each review was left on | ✅ |
| Outbound: Post a developer reply | ✅ |
| Outbound: Update or delete a developer reply | ❌ Google Play API has no update/delete endpoint |
| Multi-app per workspace | ✅ |
| Filter / route by country, version, or rating | ✅ in the inbox |
| Auto-reply bots | ✅ |
| Reviewer follow-up after your developer reply | ❌ Google's API drops it |
| Reviews older than ~7 days (Google's reply window closes) | ⚠️ ingested fine; new replies rejected by Google |
Set it up
Go to Settings → Integrations → Google Play and:
- Authenticate with a Google Play Console account that has the Reply to reviews role on each app you're connecting.
- Pick the apps Sift should monitor.
- Choose a backfill cutoff date: how far back to pull history on first sync.
- Assign each app to a queue (optional) for routing.
Sift uses the official Google Play Developer API for both reads and replies; no scraping, no third-party tooling.
What you can do
Reply to a review - Sift posts via Google's Play Developer Reviews API as the connected Play Console account.
Filter and route by country, device, version, or rating. Trigger workflows on rating drops, specific keywords, or device-specific bug signal. Apply auto-reply bots for FAQ patterns or off-hours acknowledgements.
Replies are immutable once posted - Google's API has no update or delete endpoint for developer replies. If you need to revise, post a fresh reply on the same review.
The ~7-day reply window
Google Play closes the developer-reply window roughly 7 days after a review is posted. Older reviews still ingest and stay readable in the inbox forever - but if an agent tries to post a reply on one, Google's API rejects it. Sift surfaces the rejection in the inbox so it's clear what happened.
Backfill + ongoing sync
On first connect, Sift backfills history from your cutoff date. After that, ongoing syncs poll for new and updated reviews continuously. If a reviewer edits their review or changes their rating, the existing action updates rather than spawning a duplicate.
What Sift ingests
Every public review on every connected Google Play app - Sift pulls them all. Each review becomes an action in the inbox with:
- Star rating (1–5)
- Review text
- Reviewer language (e.g.
en_US) - Sift derives a country / locale chip from this for filtering and routing - Device model the reviewer was on (useful when a bug is device-specific)
- App version the review was left on
- Last-modified timestamp
Reviews thread together by app + review ID so a single review's full history (rating change, edited text, developer reply) lives on one action.
Not supported today
- Editing or deleting a developer reply: Google's API doesn't support it. Post a new reply instead.
- Reviewer follow-up comments after your developer reply: Google's review API only exposes one user comment and one developer comment per review record; subsequent user messages aren't surfaced.
- Per-country / per-version ingestion filters: Sift pulls everything; filter / route inside the inbox.
- Pre-launch reports + ANR / crash data: separate Play Console surfaces, not in scope.