Rating Reset is an App Store Connect option that clears an app's summary star rating when a new version is released, letting the average rebuild from new ratings while written reviews stay visible.
The reset is a checkbox on the app version page in App Store Connect and takes effect when that version is released. It applies to every country or region at once, even though summary ratings are otherwise territory-specific, and the previous rating can't be restored after release. Until enough people rate the new version, the product page notes that the rating was recently reset. Written reviews are not cleared and continue to display. Google Play has no equivalent: ratings don't start over with a new version, but the rating shown to users is already weighted toward recent ratings.
The trade-off is accuracy versus proof. A reset makes sense when an average is anchored by problems a release has genuinely fixed — a crash-prone launch build, a since-repaired sync bug — and the current version would score far higher. The cost is volume: Apple warns that having few ratings may discourage downloads, and the rating count starts again. In our experience, a reset pays off only when paired with a well-timed rating prompt that rebuilds volume quickly; otherwise, steady prompting and review replies usually recover a score more safely.
Example
A photo app's 3.1-star average reflects a sync bug fixed two versions ago, while recent ratings run far higher. The team resets the rating with a major release and requests the system rating prompt after each user's first successful export, so rating volume rebuilds quickly.