Half Star Ratings in iTunes

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Posted By Paul Hamilton III on Monday, May 23, 2011
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I recently upgraded computers which meant copying over all 7,100+ songs from my library. One thing I forgot I had found years ago was the tweak I had made that allows you to rate songs in iTunes with half stars. I realize this may seem trivial to many people but with 7,100+ songs to choose from, the half star option is extremely important to me as it allows me to better organize my library.

Both the Windows and Mac iTunes tweaks are below:

For Windows:

Close iTunes.
Click on your Start Menu and search for the file named iTunesPrefs.xml. Depending on your OS, you may find 2 files with this name with one file being for the Local Machine and the other for the Roaming Profile.
Copy the iUntesPref.xml file to your desktop. If you have 2, copy the Local first and add "Local" to the beginning of the name and then copy the Roaming and add "Roaming" to the beginning of the name. This step is only so you have a clean copy should something get messed up.
Return to the search window and right click the iTunesPrefs.xml file (the Roaming if you have 2 files) and click on the "open With" menu option. When the submenu appears, choose WordPad to open the file.
Once open in WordPad, search the .xml file (Ctrl F) for the following line:

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

        Directly below the line that shows <dict>, type the following:

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

Save the WordPad file and exit.
Open iTunes and you can now enjoy giving half star ratings.
Once you confirm that the half star ratings are working correctly, you can delete the iTunesPrefs.xml copy or copies that you placed on your desktop.

For Mac:

Close iTunes
Opent Terminal (go to "Applications", then "Utilities")
Wither Terminal open, type the following command and press enter
defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars -bool TRUE
Open iTunes and begin half star ratings

Here is the final results in iTunes:

Half Star Ratings in iTunes

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