Bonetree Blog

I have such a large collection of music that 5 stars doesn’t really give me the kind of granularity that I need to rate my music, so I started looking to see if there was a way to tweak that number. I came across this Lifehacker article which explained how to do it on a Mac, but that didn’t help me because my desktop runs Windows Vista (groan). After some more poking around I came across this helpful post and it worked perfectly. Here’s a quick summary:

If you’re on a Mac

All you have to do is run this command in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars -bool TRUE

If you’re using Windows

1. Make sure to close iTunes first, otherwise your changes will be overwritten when it shuts down
2. Search for the file iTunesPrefs.xml. If you’re using XP, you’ll find it at C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes. For Vista, it’ll probably be in the directory C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes
3. Open this file in your favorite text editor
4. Search for this block of text:
   

   <key>User Preferences</key>
   <dict>

   and just underneath it, add

   <key>allow-half-stars</key>
   <data>
   dHJ1ZQ==
   </data>

5. Close and save the file, then start iTunes

You’ll now be able to give your songs half star ratings! Note: you’ll need to click on the stars themselves next to your song; the right-click menu will still only show single star ratings as options.