How do I disable Ping?

Although I do like and enjoy using iTunes, I'm not a fan of the new Ping service that Apple has embedded into it.

Is it possible to disable the Ping link under "Store", the Ping sidebar, and the Ping buttons next to each song? If so, how?

In iTunes 10.1, there’s a setting for that:

Additionally you can set a parental control that also disables Ping.

You can also restore the old arrow functionality

defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-link-arrows 1

I also suggest the following:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks 1

This setting switches the default behaviour of the arrow links. By default (well, by default in iTunes 10.0.0 and before) the arrows would send the user to the corresponding page in the iTunes Store, but you could also hold down Opt and click to be redirected to the corresponding list in your own library.

Now, to reset it all to Apple's defaults... you can either do the same lines as above but replacing '1' with '0', or you can delete the settings by changing "write" to "delete" and removing the 1 from the end:

defaults delete com.apple.iTunes disablePingSidebar

defaults delete com.apple.iTunes hide-ping-dropdown

defaults delete com.apple.iTunes show-store-link-arrows

defaults delete com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks

restart when done.

I blogged about this when I read Tom Gidden's article