How can I enable half-star ratings in.Sequoia Apple Music

I really want this to be possible again as well (I also hate the new look of the faded stars for anything that isn't rated, although I suppose I'll get used to it).

That said, one sort-of work around that is working in the meantime is to use another app to read/write the star ratings. I've been using an app called Song Rating for a long time that sits in the menu bar and displays the rating of the currently playing song. It has an option to enable half-star ratings, and it will read the proper half-star ratings from the songs when they start playing, while also allowing you to write half-star ratings to the songs by rating it through the app.

Sucks that you still can't see all of the proper song ratings in the list in Apple Music, but at least I know they're still there and am still able to rate that way if they ever come back in a future update.

I stumbled across this solution and didn't see it posted here... This method worked for me, but as mentioned it only works in Song View. (which is fine by me... not ideal Apple, but at least a couple of decades of meticulous song ratings hasn't gone down the toilet due to the stunning shortsightedness and world class out-of-touchness of Apple Music's UI and design teams.)

*** FYI, I know almost nothing about running terminal commands except for a few iTunes/Music hacks I've followed instructions for over the years, so excuse me in advance if I use bad terminology.

Here it is...

I updated my default shell to zsh and my ½ stars instantly came back. No quitting the Music app, no restarting. It seems like this was the issue for me at least.

Here's the link that tells you how to do it:

Use zsh as the default shell on your Mac - Apple Support

If you're like me and couldn't even remember how to open Terminal, here's the easy way without even doing a terminal command... don't even click that link. I've edited what you need to know below to show exactly what I did that worked.

How to change your default shell

From Users & Groups settings

In macOS Ventura or later:

1. Choose Apple menu  > System Settings, then click Users & Groups in the sidebar.
2. Control-click your user name or user picture in the list of users on the right, then choose Advanced Options.
3. Enter your user password when prompted.
4. From the “Login shell” menu, choose the last option "/bin/zsh", then click OK to save the changes.
5. Check and see if your half stars instantly re-appeared like mine did.

Good luck!

Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to work for me. I'm on one of the last Intel iMacs, also 15.1.1. I'll poke around and see if there is a combination of settings that work: your case suggests there might be something here.

Can't hurt to try and reboot. I had had a recent reboot due to a crash (unrelated, as far as I know), but when re-applied the defaults command from above I was able to use half stars immediately.

So, I have no reason to think the reboot was necessary but perhaps it played a role.

Good luck.

I would say "apathetic" screw-up. Apple support has admitted to me on the phone that their app isn't designed for "power users".

I have close to 100,000 songs in my library, many of them my own files. And I'm constantly having problems... for years. The more they move to iOS-centric design, the more the OS app suffers.

So I've reported crashes, called support and... nothing. They basically can't help because the app isn't built and updated for people who care about curating a library. The broken half-star ratings is just another example of their apathy for their most dedicated users.

No such luck here (i.e. half stars still in some views, but not all), even after closing and reopening Music. Do you need to restart MacOS to get it to work?

I'm fairly confident half-stars may work again in the 15.1 release. See https://dougscripts.com/itunes/2021/10/new-batch-rate-with-half-stars-v1-0/ for another tool that can batch rate tracks for you.

tt2

I accidentally discovered a partial "hack" (a half hack, if you will). On my M1 Mac Studio, at least, any song can be rated with half-stars as long as I'm viewing it in "Songs" (as opposed to in its album or playlist settings, where Music still insists on full stars only). I'm on 15.1.1 right now, but I think I stumbled upon this at an earlier version of Sequoia. It's only a half hack, because even after tweaking a rating, say, from 4 stars to 4.5 while in Songs, the same track will continue to default to a full star neighbour when I view it elsewhere. Still, it's occasionally helpful when I'm reviewing my library in "Songs" mode. One can continue to hope that some day Apple will acquire the "intelligence" to make this very useful user customization available across all Apple Music sorting categories. I get that they're on a limited budget, but I think this should be a priority.

They do work within smart playlists if you view those playlists “as Songs.”

Also working for me in Artist view (which is great because 95% of my usage is playlists and smart playlists in songs view or Artists. So I’m almost back to how things were working for me before.

I re-applied the defaults command, and now I can assign and see half-stars in playlists again!! (I'm on 15.1.1)

Thanks everyone! I haven't fully explored where this does and doesn't work, but I've got something now.

I just realized now -- after searching in Terminal -- that I first applied the command back on October 29. Many restarts and reboots have transpired since then until I reapplied it tonight. Mysterious are the ways of MacOS...