Play/Pause Buttons (F7 - F9) not working with Catalina 10.15.3
My Play/Pause buttons (F7 - F9) are not working in Apple Music/iTunes with Catalina 10.15.3.
Is there a solution to fix this issue?
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
User profile for user:
jeremy_v
User level:
Community Specialist
Hello meagan126 and welcome to Apple Support Communities.
I see you are having some difficulties with the media control keys on a Mac running macOS Catalina.
Are you saying that the keys do not work at all when using the Music app or that they control another application such as a video playing in a web browser? Under Catalina, the media keys are not reserved to the Music app only as they were with iTunes in previous versions of macOS. They will always affect the last app playing. So, for example, if you have Music playing and you start watching a video in the browser and then try to pause the music using the media keys, they will actually pause the video instead.
If the issue is that the media keys do not work at all and the issue is isolated to the Music app, then try these steps.
1) Start by doing a safe boot of the Mac. This will clear some cache files and give you a good foundation. After doing the safe boot, reboot normally and test.
Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support
2) If the issue persists after a safe boot, set up a test user account in order to isolate the issue to the system or the user data and ultimately resolve it.
How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac - Apple Support
If the issue persists in a test user account, consider reinstalling the Music app by reinstalling macOS.
Reinstall apps that came with your Mac - Apple Support
Cheers.