How to Restore Star Ratings In Your iPhone’s Music App

Thanks to Mark and Flickr

“Where’s my star ratings in Apple’s Music app?” a friend of mine cried on Facebook a few days ago.

He had a point.

Apple got rid of star ratings in Music with iOS 10. Apple must want us all to use the Like/Dislike buttons in Apple Music, presumably because these feed into its recommendation engines. (That’s a reasonable thought as the company tells us “Star ratings do not affect For You recommendations.”)

The decision to get rid of star ratings generated a lot of moaning and muttering of teeth among  iPhone users, who may have been using star ratings to create clever playlists since they got their first iPod in 2001. That’s why Apple put star ratings back inside the iOS in iOS 10.2.

And promptly hid them from view (by default).

Want them back?

To enable Star Ratings

Here’s what to do:

• Open Settings>Music
• Scroll down the page to Show Star Ratings and click the toggle to green (on).

To assign a star rating

• Tap and hold the track that’s playing

OR

• Tap the button in bottom right of the Now Playing screen

In order to invoke the menu that allows you to download the track, delete it, add it to a playlist, create a station, share the track, Love or Dislike the track — and (now) Rate Song.

• Tap Rate Song and in the next widget you can give it up to five stars, and hit Done.
• Ratings should sync back to iTunes and be available across your other devices.
• Hope this helps, Dave.