Apple now lets you talk to people who cancel. Here is what I would do with my Mac app

On November 4 Apple turned on retention messages for auto-renewable subscriptions. When someone taps Cancel Subscription, your app now gets one last screen to say something before they confirm. It can be text, text with an image, or text with an offer.

I mentioned it in a line in Friday's post on age ratings. It deserves more than that, because it's the first time Apple has let us talk to a subscriber at the exact moment they leave. That can go well or it can go badly, and it's on us which.

What Apple shipped

• Where it shows: in the cancellation flow, after the subscriber starts to cancel. They still get to keep or cancel.
• Three kinds of message: text only (a header and a body), text with an image, or text with a retention offer. The offer version shows only to someone who is eligible for the offer. Otherwise they see the image version, or plain text.
• Limits: up to 10 retention messages per app, and one message assigned to a subscription at a time. One message can cover several subscriptions.
• Setup: all in App Store Connect, including who is eligible and the wait time between messages.
• The API: the Retention Messaging API lets your server pick a message for each subscriber. Access is by request, so most of us will start in App Store Connect.

The rules that will trip people up

These come from Apple's help page on configuring retention messages.

• No prices or offers in the words. The header and body can't mention promotional offers, discounts or specific prices. Apple's own examples of what's not allowed are "$9.99", "50% off" and "one month free". If you want to offer something, attach a retention offer and let Apple's screen show it.
• App Review reads every message. Apple says it rejects messages that mention pricing or offers, and it steers you away from coercive or unverifiable claims, all caps and piles of exclamation marks.
• Every storefront needs a localization. The message text has to be localized for all the storefronts where the subscription is sold.
• Images have two sizes: 3840 x 2160 or 5244 x 2950 pixels.
• No undo. Editing an approved message makes a new draft. Once that's approved it replaces the old one, and you can't roll back. Deleting a message can't be undone either.

Does it help?

Apple has a number, and it's worth reading carefully. In its WWDC26 session on Retention Messaging, Apple defines save rate as the share of subscribers who keep their subscription after reaching the cancel confirmation page. It says subscriptions that adopted Retention Messaging saw an average save rate increase of 1.4 points, which it calls an 82% increase. Messages with a promotional offer did best, at 5.5 points, or 223%.

Two things about that. Those are points on a small base. An 82% rise from 1.4 points means the starting save rate was somewhere under 2%, so most people who reach that screen still cancel. And Apple adds that results varied across developers. So I'd treat it as "worth an afternoon", not "this fixes churn".

What about the Mac?

Here's the part I couldn't settle. Apple's announcement, the help page and the WWDC session don't say which platforms show the message. On a Mac, people cancel from the App Store app or System Settings, not from an iPhone sheet, so I wouldn't assume it looks the same or shows at all on older macOS versions.

The fix is cheap. Apple says sandbox testers always see your latest version, including unpublished drafts. So make a sandbox account, subscribe on your Mac, start a cancel, and look. If you sell outside the Mac App Store with Paddle or your own checkout, none of this applies to those subscribers. This is App Store subscriptions only.

What I'd do this week

These are my own steps, not Apple's.

1. Write down why people leave. Look at your cancellation emails, reviews and support mail. If the top reason is "too expensive", an offer helps. If it's "I only needed it once", a message won't change that, and you shouldn't try.
2. Start with text only. One honest header and two sentences. Say what they lose, plainly. Apple's own example of an allowed line is a factual one about losing access to downloaded content when the subscription ends.
3. Add an offer only if you'd be happy giving it. A free month or a lower price for a while is fine. Just remember that every person who sees it learns that cancelling gets a discount.
4. Set the wait between messages. Nobody should see the same pitch every time they open the subscription page.
5. Test it in the sandbox on a Mac, as above, before you trust it there.
6. Check your price while you're at it. If people leave because a subscription feels wrong for a small utility, the pricing calculator compares it with a one-time price after fees, year by year.

And one thing I wouldn't do: write a guilt trip. "Are you sure you want to lose everything?" in all caps is exactly what Apple says it doesn't want, and it's what makes people leave a one-star review on the way out.

The MacPip angle

On MacPip, price never changes where an app sits: votes alone set the order of launches. Listings are scanned automatically, and a blue tick only means a person tried the app on a date. If you're running a cancel offer or a launch price, Deals is where it can go, with an end date.

Also new today: the App Store keyword checker. It counts your app name, subtitle, keywords and promotional text against Apple's limits, shows bytes as well as characters for keywords, and gives you a cleaned keyword list with the wasted spaces and repeats taken out. If you're touching App Store Connect for retention messages anyway, it's a good moment to tidy those fields too. And if your Mac app isn't on MacPip yet, listing it is free.

Sources

• Apple Developer: Now available: Retention messages for subscriptions
• App Store Connect Help: Configure retention messages
• Apple Developer: Explore Retention Messaging in App Store Connect (WWDC26)
• Apple Developer Documentation: Retention Messaging API
• MacRumors: Apps Can Now Try to Stop You From Canceling Subscriptions

Keep reading

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• Siri AI is open to every developer now. Here is what I would do with my Mac appApple opened Siri AI to all developers in the macOS 27.3 beta. What changed, what you can and cannot ship yet, and a short plan for a small Mac app.
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