Star Ratings Are Indeed Gone in iOS 10 Music App; But There’s Still a Way to Rate Your Songs

Apple has been flip-flopping on the ability to rate songs with stars in iTunes and the iOS Music app. An early beta of macOS Sierra removed star ratings from iTunes, and star ratings have been missing in iOS 10 since the first beta release.

iOS 10 is to be officially released today, and star ratings are gone. You cannot view the ratings of your songs, and you cannot rate your tracks from the iOS Music app. You used to be able to rate songs by tapping the album artwork, which would switch to a display with five stars; you would tap one of them to rate the track. If you had already rated it, you would see the rating heer.

If you tap the artwork now, nothing displays. If you tap the … button at the bottom of the Music app’s player screen, you see this screen. The only rating options are Love and Dislike.

Ios music dialog

But there is a way to rate tracks on an iOS device; unfortunately, it’s the wrong way. Tell Siri “Rate this song five stars,” for example.

Ios music rate siri

The problem with this is that invoking Siri pauses playback, and you cannot quietly rate your tracks. So if you’re on a bus, for example, and you’re listening to some new music and want to rate it, you might not want to talk to your iPhone. You could rate tracks with Love ratings, then adjust those in iTunes when you get home, applying star ratings, but that’s annoying.

This is unfortunate, because many people use star ratings to organize their iTunes libraries, and, by extension, the music they listen to on their iOS devices. They create smart playlists with music grouped by star ratings, or playlists of their favorite songs by specific artists, perhaps all those tracks rated four or five stars.

Also, nothing has been gained by removing this feature. Tapping the artwork now does nothing, so the rating feature hasn’t been removed to make room for something else that might display in its place.

In a quest to simplify the interface of an app, you can go too far and remove useful features.

Want to know more about the iOS 10 Music app? Check out these articles:

And learn What’s New in iTunes 12.5.