Enabling half-stars in Apple Music on Mac

Last modified: May 25, 2025 6:15 PM
1 132 Last modified May 25, 2025 6:15 PM

This Terminal command has traditionally been used to enable half-stars:


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


However in recent versions of macOS this doesn't appear to be sufficient on its own. An additional step of setting (or reselecting) zsh as your shell seems to be required. These steps are taken from the Use zsh as the default shell on your Mac - Apple Support support article:


How to change your default shell:

  1. Choose Apple menu  > System Settings, then click Users & Groups in the sidebar.
  2. Control-click your username or user picture in the list of users on the right, then choose Advanced Options.
  3. Enter your username and password when prompted.
  4. Choose a shell (/bin/zsh) from the "Login shell" menu, then click OK to save the changes.



Even if your shell is already set to zsh making this change, or reapplying it, appears to help the original Terminal command achieve the aim of allowing for half-stars to be displayed and edited within Music.



Note that half-stars are only shown and editable in the Songs view of the library or a playlist. Ensure that View > Show View Options > Show Artwork & Always Show are enabled to be able to display and edit album ratings. The album rating column in the browser is not editable. The (track) rating column can be used to adjust track ratings which cannot be adjusted via Song Info. In other views, such as playlists or album any half-stars will not be shown with the lower value displayed instead.



Note here how the album rating of 2½ stars bleeds through to an automatic track rating for the two unrated tracks shown. If you prefer not to see auto-ratings see the user tip Handling grey stars - Apple Community.


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