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Available on all paid Dovetail plans.
Connect the Google Play Store to Dovetail to automatically import app reviews into Channels, where they’re analyzed, clustered into themes, and made searchable alongside the rest of your customer feedback. Google Play Store is a Channels integration only. It doesn’t appear as an import source in Projects. Learn more about Channels →

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Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have:
  • A Dovetail workspace on any paid plan.
  • Access to your organization’s Google Play Console with View app information permission. If you aren’t a developer, ask your developer team to add your email to your organization’s Google Console with View app information permissions.
  • The package name for each app you want to import — for example, com.acme.mobile. You’ll enter these during setup.
  • Can edit or Full access on the Channel where you want to import reviews. Manage permissions in the Channel’s Share settings.
  • A shared Google account used by the person setting up the integration — Dovetail authenticates against a real Google user.

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Set up the integration

You can start the connection from the Channel you want to import into, or from Settings → Integrations.
  1. Open the Channel where you want to import reviews, or create a new one.
  2. Select Add source.
  3. In the Connect data source dialog, select Google Play.
  4. Review the requirements on the Connect Google Play Store screen and select Continue. Dovetail lists three prerequisites here:
    • To input your developer name. If you aren’t a developer, ask your developer team to add your email to your organization’s Google Console with View app information permissions.
    • Google Play store login credentials. Required to authorize the connection. If a Google Play Store account owner lacks Dovetail access, you can invite them as a free user from this screen.
    • ‘Can edit’ or ‘Full access’ to the Channel. Required to access the Channel. Manage permissions in the Channel’s Share settings.

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Authorize Dovetail

When you continue, a Google sign-in window opens.
  1. Sign in with the Google account that has access to your Google Play Console.
  2. Approve the requested permissions.
Dovetail requests two OAuth scopes: The androidpublisher scope is the only scope Google offers for programmatic access to reviews — it’s an all-or-nothing scope. To restrict what Dovetail can see, connect a Google user (or a Play Console user) who has access only to the apps you want Dovetail to read. You can revoke the connection at any time from your Google Account permissions.
Common reason authorization fails: the Google account you signed in with hasn’t been added to your organization’s Google Play Console, or it doesn’t have View app information permission on the apps you want to import. Ask a Play Console admin to add your email with the right permissions and try again.

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Add the apps you want to import

After authorizing, you’ll see the Connect with your app store step.
  1. Enter one or more app package names. You can paste multiple, separated by commas — for example, com.acme.mobile, com.acme.tablet.
  2. Select Add. Dovetail validates each package name against the Google Play API.
    • Valid IDs move into the list below the input.
    • Invalid IDs surface as an inline error: Invalid app IDs [com.example.bad]. Remove or correct them and try again.
  3. Repeat until you’ve added every app you want to connect. You can add up to 10 apps per integration. If you need more than 10, reach out to support.
  4. Select Continue.
Where to find a package name. In the Play Console, open an app and check the URL or the App details page — the package name looks like com.company.app and is unique to that app.

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Confirm what to analyze

On Configure what to analyze, Dovetail pre-selects every app you validated in the previous step — you don’t need to pick them again.
  • Apps. All validated apps are selected by default. You can uncheck any you don’t want in this Channel.
  • From the last. Fixed to Last 7 days. Google Play’s Reviews API only exposes reviews from the last 7 days — this is a hard limit set by Google, not a Dovetail-side setting. Anything older isn’t available through the API. See Backfilling older reviews below if you need historical data.
Select Finish to create the data source.

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What Dovetail imports

For each review, Dovetail creates one data point in the Channel with the review text, the developer’s reply (if any), and a link back to the review in the Play Store. Fields Dovetail imports as metadata: The data point itself includes:
  • The review comment text as the analyzed content.
  • The developer’s reply (if present), attributed to Developer, as a second turn in the conversation.
  • The reviewer’s display name (as returned by Google — often a generic pseudonym).
  • A direct link back to the review at play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=<appId>&reviewId=<reviewId>.
  • The review’s last-modified timestamp as the data point’s date.
What doesn’t transfer:
  • Reviews older than 7 days at the time Dovetail queries the API — Google doesn’t expose them.
  • Star-rating-only reviews with no comment text.
  • Reviewer email addresses. Google Play doesn’t expose them.
  • Custom Play Console labels, internal notes, or A/B experiment context.
  • Play Console policy actions, takedowns, or moderation events.
  • Sentiment, topic, or category tags computed inside the Play Console.
  • Screenshots or attachments — Google Play reviews are text-only.
  • In-app purchase records, crash reports, or performance metrics.
  • Historical revisions of a review after the reviewer edits it — Dovetail keeps whichever version it saw most recently.
Need a field that isn’t on this list? Let us know at support@dovetail.com.

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Sync behavior

  • Initial backfill. On first connection, Dovetail imports reviews from the last 7 days for each connected app.
  • Ongoing sync. After the initial import, Dovetail syncs about once an hour — new and updated reviews land in the Channel automatically, typically within an hour of being posted. The schedule is fixed; there’s no way to trigger a manual sync or change the frequency.
  • Scope. Every review returned by the Reviews API for the connected apps, including reviews from any country and language, is imported. Dovetail doesn’t filter by rating, country, device, or language.
  • Developer replies. If you reply to a review in Play Console, Dovetail imports the reply as a follow-up turn on the same data point.
  • Rate limits. The Reviews API has per-project quotas set by Google. Dovetail retries transient rate-limit errors with backoff. Sustained failures show up in the Channel’s source card as a re-authorization or error banner.

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Backfilling older reviews

Because the Reviews API only returns the last 7 days, Dovetail can’t reach back further through the API. If you need historical reviews:
  1. In Google Play Console, download reviews as a CSV from the Ratings and reviews report.
  2. In the Channel, add the CSV as a second data source. Dovetail will analyze the historical reviews alongside the ongoing Google Play sync.
You’ll see a banner in the Channel that says: “Google Play only imports data less than 7 days old. To backfill more, download a .csv from your Google console and import to Channels.”

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Troubleshooting

I authorized, but no reviews are showing up.
  • Google Play only exposes reviews from the last 7 days. If none of your apps received a reviewed comment in that window, there’s nothing for Dovetail to import. Check the Play Console’s Ratings and reviews report to confirm.
  • Star-rating-only reviews with no text aren’t imported.
  • Confirm the Google account you authorized with has View app information permission on the connected apps in Play Console.
Fewer reviews imported than I expected.
  • Reviews with no comment text (star ratings only) aren’t imported.
  • If a reviewer edited or deleted a review before Dovetail’s next poll, the newer version overwrites the older one; deleted reviews stop syncing.
  • Some reviews may appear in Play Console’s UI before they appear in the API — Google’s API can lag by a few minutes.
“Invalid app IDs” when I add a package name.
  • The package name must be exact — check for typos, extra spaces, or the wrong case.
  • The authorized Google account must have access to that app in Play Console. If a colleague owns the app, ask them to grant you View app information permission.
  • Confirm the app is published (or at least visible) in the same Play Console organization the account belongs to.
The Channel is showing a re-authorization banner.
  • The Google refresh token expired, was revoked in your Google Account, or the connected user lost access to one or more apps in Play Console. From the source card, select Reconnect and sign in again. If the underlying issue was permissions, restore access in Play Console first.
  • If some apps are inaccessible, you’ll see this message: “The Dovetail service account no longer has access to one or more Google Play apps. Re-grant ‘View app information’ and ‘Reply to reviews’ in Play Console.”
We have multiple Play Console organizations.
  • Each Dovetail integration authorizes against one Google account. If that account has access to apps across multiple Play Console organizations, you can add package names from any of them, up to the 10-app cap. If you need apps from organizations the account can’t reach, connect a second Google account by adding a separate data source with a different signed-in user.
Rate limits.
  • Dovetail respects Google Play’s per-project quotas and retries with backoff. Persistent 429 responses on your project will delay sync until Google restores quota — you don’t need to do anything on your side.

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Disconnect or delete the Google Play Store source

Disconnecting stops new data from importing but keeps everything already imported. Deleting removes the source and all its data points from the Channel — this is permanent. To disconnect:
  1. Open the Channel and select Sources (or the source card menu).
  2. Select ••• → Disconnect.
  3. Confirm in the Disconnect data source dialog:
    Are you sure you want to disconnect <source name> from <Channel name>? This will immediately stop the Channel from ingesting any new data. Any data already imported from this source will remain in the Channel.
  4. Select Disconnect.
You can reconnect later from the same menu — select Reconnect and re-authorize. To delete:
  1. From the same source menu, select ••• → Delete.
  2. Confirm in the Delete data source dialog:
    Are you sure you want to delete <source name> from <Channel name>? This will delete all associated data points. This is permanent and cannot be undone.
  3. Select Delete.
To fully revoke Dovetail’s access on the Google side:
  1. Go to Google Account → Security → Third-party apps with account access.
  2. Find Dovetail in the list and select Remove access.
Revoking access in your Google Account also invalidates any refresh token Dovetail holds. If you reconnect later, you’ll need to re-authorize.

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FAQs

Dovetail identifies each app by its package name (also called the application ID) — for example, com.spotify.music. Here’s how to find it:
  • From the Play Store listing (easiest). Open the app’s Play Store page and look at the URL. The package name is the value after id=. For example, in https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dovetail.support.app&hl=en_US, the package name is com.dovetail.support.app. Ignore everything from & onward (&hl=en_US is just the display language).
  • From Google Play Console. Open the app. The package name appears beneath the app’s name and in the Console URL for that app.
  • From your developer team. It’s the applicationId in the app’s build.gradle.
Each package name is validated as you add it. Valid apps appear in the list; invalid ones show an error.If you get an “Invalid app IDs” error for a package name you’re sure is correct, it usually means the connected Google account doesn’t have Play Console access to that app — not that the ID is wrong. Confirm the account has access to that app’s developer account, then try again.
Dovetail checks for new Google Play reviews about once an hour, automatically. When you first connect an app, we run an initial import right away so you don’t have to wait — after that, it settles into the regular hourly cadence. There’s nothing to configure and no button to press; new reviews flow in on their own.
The hourly schedule is fixed and applies to all workspaces — there isn’t currently a way to trigger a manual sync or change the frequency. In practice, hourly is frequent enough that new reviews typically appear in Dovetail within an hour of being posted.
Google’s Play Store API only makes reviews from the last 7 days available — older reviews are removed from the API by Google, not by Dovetail. Because of this:
  • When you connect an app, we import the reviews from the past 7 days.
  • From then on, hourly syncing keeps you fully up to date (an hour is well within Google’s 7-day window, so nothing is missed).
  • To bring in older historical reviews, download a CSV export from your Google Play Console and import it into Channels directly. This is the only way to backfill beyond 7 days, and it’s a Google limitation that affects every tool, not just Dovetail.
There’s no Dovetail-imposed cap on the number of reviews. Google enforces its own usage limits on its API, and Dovetail automatically stays within them by pacing requests. For normal usage — even across many apps and a busy review volume — you won’t hit these limits.
If Google temporarily asks us to slow down, Dovetail automatically backs off and retries later, then resumes syncing on its own. You don’t need to do anything, and no reviews are lost — they’ll be picked up on the next successful sync.
The most common cause is a permissions change in the Google Play Console. If Dovetail’s access is revoked, re-grant “View app information” and “Reply to reviews” for the Dovetail service account in your Play Console, and syncing will resume.
Reach out to our team at support@dovetail.com, and we’d be happy to talk through it with you and your team.