Removing iTunes Store Arrows
You might have noticed that the preference to show or not show arrows linking to the iTunes music store is no longer there in iTunes 8. That means the average user is subjected to user interface clutter — arrow after arrow after arrow, all linking to the iTunes music store. Awesome. Except it isn’t. According to Mac OS X Hints, this is how you fix the issue on a Mac:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links
-bool FALSE
So… how to remove the store arrows on iTunes for Windows? I’ve been wondering that myself. A Mobile Computer article showing how to remove the Genre column from iTunes 8 tells how to find the preferences file for iTunes on Windows:
Quit iTunes and locate the iTunes preferences file – iTunesPrefs.xml. The easiest way to do this, both for Windows XP and Windows Vista is to press [Win] + [E] to open a new Explorer window, and then type %appdata% into the address bar. This will open the Application Data folder – you then just need to navigate to Apple Computer>iTunes. You should then see the iTunesPrefs.xml file.
Using a text editor that isn’t Notepad (or Word — shame!), you can edit this iTunesPrefs.xml file. It gets a little fuzzy here, because I haven’t yet installed iTunes 8 (I’m not eager to upgrade). I think you are looking for the text “arrows” in this iTunesPrefs.xml file. Then, you want to replace the <data> tag immediately following the <key> you found with this:
AA==
I believe that should fix it. I’ll take a poke around in my iTunesPrefs.xml file to see if I can get the name of the preference that needs to be changed.
UPDATE: Updated to iTunes 8 and found that inserting this code at the end of the iTunesPrefs.xml file will remove the store arrows:
<key>show-store-arrow-links</key>
<data>
AA==
</data>
Comments
Nils
Yeah, I saw the weirdness of the new iTunes on a friend’s computer and have decided to never upgrade mine. Is this a wise choice?
Alexander Micek
Unless you are particularly enamored with the “Genius” feature, and unless you get a new iPod that requires iTunes 8, I’d hold off. I know I am waiting.
Also, if you have a very large library (at least in Windows), iTunes can take over 3 hours to reprocess all your music for use with the new Genius, etc. features. At some point I’ll upgrade, and figure out how to remove those arrows. Until then, iTunes 7!