How to Read App Store Reviews for Coloring Apps

Before you download a coloring app, you probably glance at the stars. A 4.8 looks safe and a 3.1 looks risky. But a star average without context is one of the least reliable signals on an App Store page, especially for small, newer coloring apps. This guide explains how to read ratings and written reviews, what suspicious reviews tend to look like, and what the law now says about fake ones.

The Short Version

Look at how many ratings sit behind the average before you look at the average itself. Then read a few of the written reviews, newest and lowest first, for specifics about ads, purchases and crashes. And remember that stars can’t tell you what an app does with a child’s data or whether it has a parental gate, which is why those need to be checked directly.

How We Researched This

We read Apple’s developer guidance on ratings and reviews and the FTC’s announcement of its final rule on fake reviews. For real examples of rating data, we looked up the public App Store rating figures for every app in our database on October 7, 2026. One disclosure matters here: all 15 of those apps are published by EyeZen, a developer affiliated with our editorial team (see our disclosure policy). They are examples, not a sample of the wider market, and we have no reason to think any of their ratings are anything other than genuine. We don’t use star ratings in our scores.

How App Store Ratings Work

From Apple’s developer documentation:

• Users rate an app on a scale of one to five stars, and individual ratings feed the summary rating shown on the product page and in search results.
• The summary rating is specific to each country or region.
• A developer can reset the summary rating when releasing a new version. Apple notes that resetting it does not reset the app’s written reviews.
• Apple generates review summaries using large language models, compiling highlights from individual reviews. A summary is a convenience, not a substitute for reading a few reviews yourself.
• Developers can respond to reviews, and reviewers are notified when they do.
• Apple describes a Report a Concern option for reviews that contain offensive material, spam or other content that violates its terms.

The reset rule has a practical consequence. A low ratings count doesn’t automatically mean an app is new or unpopular, and a high average doesn’t mean the app has a long record of satisfied users.

Why the Count Matters More Than the Average

Here is what the public figures looked like for the 15 coloring apps in our database on October 7, 2026:

Across all 15 apps there were 37 ratings in total. Thirteen of the 15 showed a perfect 5.0 average, one showed 4.5, and one showed 4.0. Taken at face value, that looks like glowing praise. In reality, an average built on one to four ratings tells you almost nothing. With one rating, the average is just that person’s vote, and a single new 1-star rating would pull a 5.0 average on four ratings down to 4.2. That’s not a flaw in these apps; it’s how small numbers work, and it’s typical of small, new releases.

The same logic applies in reverse. If a competing app shows 3.2 stars across several thousand ratings, that figure carries more information than a 5.0 from three ratings, even though it looks worse. When we say “treat a handful of ratings as an anecdote,” that is our own rule of thumb, not an Apple standard. There is no official cutoff.

Reading the Written Reviews

Stars are a vote; text is evidence. When you read reviews of a coloring app, look for:

• Specifics over adjectives. “Ads appear between every page” or “locked behind a subscription after the first picture” tells you something. “Great app!!!” does not.
• The three or four lowest-rated reviews. They’re where complaints about ads, surprise charges and crashes surface. One angry review is noise; the same complaint repeated is a pattern.
• Recent reviews. An app can change a lot between versions. Check that the reviews you’re reading roughly match the current version’s date.
• Mentions of children. For a kids’ app, a parent describing what their child actually did with it is worth more than a generic compliment.
• Developer replies. A calm, specific reply to a complaint is a good sign. Copy-pasted replies, or none at all, say something too.

Signs a Review May Not Be Genuine

None of these proves a review is fake, and real reviews can look odd. They are reasons to look harder, and to lean on the app’s own listing and your own testing instead of the stars:

• A cluster of 5-star reviews posted within a day or two, all praising the app in similar, generic words.
• Praise that describes features the app doesn’t appear to have.
• Text that reads like marketing copy (“a must-have app for every family!”) rather than a person describing an experience.
• Very few reviews with text, but a large number of perfect ratings, or the reverse.
• Reviews that sound like the developer’s own press release.

What the Law Now Says About Fake Reviews

In August 2024, the US Federal Trade Commission announced a final rule on fake reviews and testimonials. According to the FTC, the rule prohibits:

• fake or false consumer reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones that claim to be from someone who does not exist;
• buying positive or negative reviews conditioned on a particular sentiment;
• undisclosed reviews and testimonials by a company’s officers, managers or employees, unless their connection is clearly and conspicuously disclosed;
• misrepresenting a company-controlled website as an independent source of reviews;
• suppressing reviews through unfounded or groundless legal threats, intimidation or false accusations; and
• buying or selling fake social media indicators such as followers and views.

This is a big part of why we publish a disclosure policy and label apps developed by a company affiliated with our editorial team. Anything that looks like an independent review should say clearly who is behind the app. The rule is a US rule, and nobody can check every review on every app, so it makes skepticism easier to justify, not unnecessary.

A Sixty-Second Routine Before You Download

1. Check the number of ratings. If it’s a handful, set the average aside.
2. Open the three lowest reviews. Look for repeated complaints about ads, purchases or crashes.
3. Skim the newest reviews and check whether they describe the current version.
4. Read any developer replies.
5. Look past the stars. Check the age rating, the privacy label and the paywall; our guide to reading a coloring app paywall shows what to look for.
6. Test it yourself for ten minutes before you hand it to a child, using our checklist for safe coloring apps.

If you’re wary of mass-produced listings, our guide to spotting a low-quality AI coloring app covers the other warning signs.

What Reviews Can’t Tell You

Star ratings and written reviews are written by whoever happened to leave one. They almost never mention whether an app has a parental gate, what data it collects, or whether its “free” pages are one or a hundred. Those facts come from testing and from the listing itself, which is why our BCA Score is built on hands-on testing rather than on what the App Store averages say.

Our Take

Treat stars as a starting point. The count tells you how much weight the average deserves, the written reviews tell you what real people ran into, and neither replaces opening the app yourself. If an app is new and has almost no ratings, that isn’t a reason to avoid it, just a reason to rely more on what you can verify: its listing, its paywall, its privacy label and ten minutes of your own use.

Our own scores come from testing, not star ratings. Browse all coloring app reviews, or see our best coloring apps for kids and best coloring apps for adults rankings.

Sources: Ratings and Reviews (Apple Developer), Federal Trade Commission Announces Final Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials (FTC, August 2024), rating counts and averages for the apps in our database from Apple’s public iTunes Lookup service, retrieved October 7, 2026