If you try to cancel an App Store subscription, the app behind it can now get a last word. Apple has opened a feature that lets developers put a message, an image or a special offer in front of you in the cancellation flow, and it went live on 4 November.
Apple calls them retention messages. A developer might remind you what the subscription includes, announce upcoming content, or offer a cheaper or free stretch to keep you paying. Whether you see a plain message, a picture or a discount depends on how the developer has set things up and whether you qualify.
Apple’s developer announcement says developers set the messages up inside App Store Connect for their auto-renewing subscriptions, choosing who qualifies and how long to pause between messages. Teams that want finer control can use the Retention Messaging API, which decides per subscriber which message appears. Apple grants that API on request.
Apple’s App Store Connect help page sets out the limits. Each message needs header and body text, and may add an image and one or more offers. An app can have up to 10 messages, and a subscription can have only one message assigned to it at a time. A subscriber sees text only, text with an image, or text with an offer, and an offer takes the place of the image when the subscriber is eligible for it.
The offers are where money changes hands. A retention offer is a discount or a free period, and a developer can create up to 10 of them for each subscription billing plan type. Eligibility can depend on how long someone has paid for the subscription, and the developer can set a wait before the same offer can be redeemed again. An offer can be billed per period, paid up front or free, and Apple converts the price into each country’s currency from current exchange rates unless the developer sets its own.
Apple also puts a rule on the text. Because every subscriber sees the same body text, developers are told not to mention specific offers or prices in it. A message cannot promise “50% off” in words; the offer itself has to carry that.
Apple’s pages describe the message as part of the cancellation flow and do not say it replaces the cancel option. If you pay for apps monthly, expect some of them to start showing a screen before you cancel.
Developers who want the real-time version need to ask Apple for API access first, so how widely the messages appear will depend on how many apply.
