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Don't Suffer The Arrows of iTunes 8
Posted 04/13/2009 at 5:57:00am | by Scott Rose

screen shot of itunes app
The little arrows in iTunes can serve double duty, and they can also be disabled altogether.

I upgraded to iTunes 8, and now all those little arrows have reappeared next to my songs. How can I get rid of them?

iTunes has a handy feature that lets you click on a little arrow next to a track in your iTunes Library and jump to the corresponding song, artist, or album in the iTunes Store (depending on which column your clicked arrow was in). In previous versions of iTunes, you could hide these arrows by unchecking Show Links To The iTunes Store in the preferences.

But in iTunes 8, the arrows reappear regardless of what choice you made in previous versions. The preference to get rid of them is actually still available, but it’s now hidden. You can disable the arrows by launching the Terminal and typing:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool false

Replace false with true to bring the arrows back again. If iTunes is running, you will need to quit and relaunch it for your changes to take effect.

But instead of disabling the arrows, you might want to consider changing how they work. If you Option-click an arrow, it takes you to the related music within your own music library instead of the iTunes Store. So, for example, if you Option-click Jack Johnson’s name, you’ll jump to the Jack Johnson music in your library.

But you can reverse the functionality of the arrows so that a normal click shows you results from your own library, and the Option-click takes you to the iTunes Store. To do this, launch the Terminal and type:defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool yes

Replace yes with no to make the arrows function normally again. Again, if iTunes is running, be sure to quit and relaunch it for your changes to take effect.

COMMENTS: 2
TAGS:  iTunes
COMMENTS
avatarinvertStoreLinks is AWESOME!

I saw this and tried out inverting the links instead of disabling them, and it rocks. Thanks for the tip!

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avatarworth changing

i had never even thought to click those arrows until this tip and i have found it to be quite useful! Thanks again MacLife

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