Cancelling an app subscription through Apple can now come with one last pitch from the app you're leaving.
MacRumors reported on 4 November that Apple has added a subscription retention feature for developers, letting them show retention messages when a subscriber goes to cancel. According to MacRumors, Apple says the messages will appear in the subscription cancellation flow and can include text, images or a special offer. For ordinary users, MacRumors says, that means people on the App Store may see discounts or reasons to keep a subscription before they cancel.
What subscribers may see
The change sits in the place most iPhone owners already go to end a subscription. Apple's support page walks through the route: open Settings, tap your name, tap Subscriptions, pick the subscription and tap Cancel Subscription. Retention messages are the app's chance to speak up along the way.
Apple's App Store Connect help page describes three versions of a message: text only, text with an image, or text with a retention offer. Offers go only to subscribers who qualify, so two people cancelling the same app could see different things. Someone who doesn't qualify gets the image, if there is one, or just the text.
The same page has one detail worth knowing. The header and body text can't mention promotional offers, discounts or prices, and App Review rejects messages that do. A discount has to arrive as a proper offer attached to the message, not as a claim written into the copy.
What developers control
MacRumors reports that developers can set up retention messages in App Store Connect for auto-renewable subscriptions, with options for subscriber eligibility and wait times. Apple's help page describes the wait as an optional gap, set per offer, before a subscriber can redeem the same offer again.
There is also a heavier tool. MacRumors says a separate Retention Messaging API lets developers choose which messages to show based on subscription details, and that access to it is by request.
Apple's help page adds some limits. An app can have up to 10 retention messages, and each subscription can have only one message at a time. Offers can be discounts or free periods, and developers can set a minimum paid subscription length before someone qualifies. Editing an approved message doesn't change what subscribers see straight away, either: they keep seeing the approved version until the new draft is approved.
That review step matters for readers, because it means these messages aren't simply whatever a developer feels like typing on the day. Developers submit them for review, and the header and body text have to follow the App Review Guidelines.
What we don't know yet
MacRumors' report doesn't say how many apps will use retention messages, and Apple's help page doesn't either. Neither names any apps that have signed up so far, so it's too early to tell whether this becomes a common sight or something only the biggest subscription apps bother with.
Mia's take: A discount at the exit is a fair trade if it stays a single screen and the cancel button stays easy to reach. The useful bit for readers is that this can work in your favour: if you were leaving over price, the cancel screen may now be where a cheaper deal appears. Just check how long the offer runs and what the subscription costs afterwards, because a short discount on something you've stopped using is still money spent on something you've stopped using.
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