Set half-star ratings directly in iTunes

iTunes has long supported half-star ratings, but I recently discovered (I thought) that iTunes 8 added support for setting these half-star values directly within the iTunes interface. After submitting a hint, robg told me that he couldn’t replicate the trick, nor could any of the others he asked to also test it out. So I went back to my machine to figure out why it works for me.

After some poking around, I figured out that I’d read about a hidden iTunes preference that enables half-star ratings. After reading about it, I must have tested it, because it was enabled in my version of iTunes (confirmed via a defaults read... check in Terminal). Here’s how to enable it on your copy of iTunes. First, quit iTunes, then enter this command …