Enable Half-Star Ratings in iTunes
iTunes allows users to rate songs on a 1 star to 5 star basis, song rating data can then be used for a variety of purposes, either for your own reference or for creating custom play lists that only include songs rated over a certain star value. But what if a song is somewhere in the middle of the rating scale, not quite worthy of 4 stars but not a 3 star song either? For more precise personal ratings, enable the half-star rating option in iTunes.
Launch the Terminal, found within the /Applications/Utilities/ directory, and enter the following defaults write command:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars -bool TRUE
Quit and relaunch iTunes for changes to take effect. To give something a half star, click and slide the star rating scale until the 1/2 value shows.
To remove the half-star rating option use the following defaults command and then relaunch iTunes again:
defaults delete com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars
Removing the half stars moves the song rating to the star below it, so a 3 1/2 star song would turn into a 3 star song, and so on.
I can’t understand what would Apple be thinking to set the poorest option as default… Thanks for sharing,
I’m with vdiv!! I know that iTunes *actually* stores ratings as 0 up to 100!!! So, when you rate a track 5 stars, iTunes actually stores it as 100, a rating of 3 stars is actually 60, etc. I would LOVE to be able to use ALL 100 points to rate tracks! Anybody know how to do that?
And, to answer John’s question, yes, iTunes *does* properly sort ratings in ascending/descending order with half-stars enabled. Very cool.
Awesome!
Question: does iTunes properly sort Ratings in ascending/descending order (i.e., 4.5 is followed by 4 which is then followed by 3.5?)
yes it does.
For even more precise rating how do we then enable 1/4 and 3/4 stars since a song may not be worth 3 1/2 stars, but worth more than just 3 stars? ;)
It’s also worth a note that when changing the setting back to ‘whole stars’ even though the stars only show in whole increments in iTunes, the metadata of the songs are STILL in half-star increments. So, if you turned the option back on again, the ‘correct’ half-star ratings would show and be in tact. This is good to know if you are worried about losing the ratings if you move to a new system or that setting gets reset during an update – your half-star ratings are still there!
Very good to know, thanks for the info!