Bubble Foundry

Tweaking iTunes Settings

by Peter.

Over the last few iTunes revisions there have been several changes that, in my opinion, have made the iTunes user interface slightly less usable. Luckily, almost all the changes can be reversed by changing the right property values.

Here’s the Bash function I wrote today so I can toggle the settings without remembering the special commands:

# tweak iTunes
iTunes () {
    if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
        open -a iTunes
    else
        case $1 in
            "buttons" )
                if [ $# -gt 1 ]; then
                    case $2 in
                        # the standard OS X (ie pre-iTunes 10) layout
                        "horizontal" )
                            defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1;;
                        # iTunes 10 layout
                        "vertical" )
                            defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -0;;
                    esac
                else
                    echo "Additional parameter required.";
                fi
                ;;
            "arrows" )
                if [ $# -gt 1 ]; then
                    case $2 in
                        # arrows go to entries in the iTunes Music Store (default)
                        "store" )
                            defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool FALSE;;
                        # arrows go to entries within the local iTunes library
                        "library" )
                            defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool TRUE;;
                        # show arrows next to songs, artists, albums (ie pre iTunes 10.0.1)
                        "on" )
                            defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-link-arrows -bool TRUE;;
                        # don't show arrows (ie iTunes 10.0.1)
                        "off" )
                            defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-link-arrows -bool FALSE;;
                    esac
                else
                    echo "Additional parameter required.";
                fi
                ;;
            * )
                echo "Invalid option.";;
        esac
    fi
}

Just drop it into your ~/.profile, save, and reload from the Terminal (source ~/.profile) and you’re good to go!