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media keys on magic keyboard not working on catalina

Hi there,


I've downgraded from monterey to catalina for a good reason.

Now the only problem I have is that the media keys on my magic keyboard won't work.

Maybe there's an app or something. I would like to have the keys previous title; play/pause; next title; mute; louder; quieter.

Updating to Big Sur or Monterey is out of question because everything since Mac Os 11 is purely buggy.

the most things will work better on catalina.

if there's no solution i would rather live the way it is now than going back to that buggy ****.


Cheers

Joachim

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Feb 6, 2022 9:51 AM

Reply

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26 replies

Feb 12, 2022 4:20 PM in response to dialabrain

i can tell that all media keys (play pause, next title, volume keys) work with an 5 or 6 years old logitech keyboard that costs 10 "dollars" by pressing the fn key and then i got the media keys (the blue ones)

still talking of the same system of course

strange that the use the f1,f2 keys as standard function keys still wont appear on my system preferences with the logitech plugged in

Feb 12, 2022 10:32 AM in response to dialabrain

tried it with nvram and smc still same situation i cant use any media key.

how long do they need to develop a system where i can use media keys on a original apple magic keyboard, if big sur and monterey wouldn't be such catastrophes.... under those systems the media keys worked properly but there are a LOT of other things that are extremely annoying so i will definitely stay with catalina..... osX is still the best thing . maybe one day there will be a newer system that is stable but im fine with catalina and i can rather do without the media keys than the other way around.

thanks for your help

Feb 12, 2022 5:25 PM in response to dialabrain

hahaha yeah that's right .... I don't bother because now I got my magic keyboard and I love it ( I only got it two weeks or so)

and also I have the magic mouse 2 which is great


so now I tried the smc again and safe mode nothing will bring my media keys back but you cannot have everything can you


I pretty much like catalina what I can't say about big sur and monterey ... they pretty much seem for me like apple doesn't know what they are doing anymore, that's my experience and no one can convince me otherwise

maybe it's because I have an Intel Mac and they're running fine with silicon, I really don't know and maybe I'm doing the new systems an injustice

but even if it is that way they have to guarantee that it will work with older Macs otherwise they mustn't offer the new ones to it. That's my opinion.

Don't get me wrong I'm an Apple boy and I love a lot of their products but I don't consume blindly everything they release just because it's from Apple. I used to be rather objectively.


Cheers

Joachim

Feb 12, 2022 5:31 PM in response to Joachim24

This is pure sepcualation on my part but it's possible the firmware that was installed with Big Sur and Monterey is not replaced by downgrading to Catalina. Perhaps that's the problem. I don't know.


What I can say is I have 4 installs of Monterey on 3 Macs and the only reason I don't have it installed on all my Macs is because the other 3 Macs are too old to run it.

Feb 12, 2022 5:45 PM in response to dialabrain

hmm....I really don't know because you say the media keys work with your catalina

but as I said I made a clean install and completely deleted the ssd with disc utility ....


to answer your question by the way I wrote it on the first page I can't even use the media keys with holding the fn key it won't work that alone seems pretty strange doesn't it


for me nothing is properly working since big sur it affects kodi in which i can't use the mouse over the entire display.

au lab is not asking for mic permission so isn't working for me I need it to equalize system sounds and chat mate for whatsapp doesn't show any notifications and no red number in the dock so I don't know if I got new messages

being in safari I can't write properly in the address bar because there's a huge time lag and so on

As I said I really got my reasons.

On Catalina I have none of the problems mentioned

but ironically the media keys with my new magic keyboard did work on monterey but won't on catalina anymore as you already know of course hehe.....

Long story short I can live with it rather as it is now than the other way around, it just was a try with the media keys also working on catalina



Feb 16, 2022 4:56 PM in response to Joachim24

yeah I got the idea from another thread from the german version of the apple discussions site

well, there was someone who wanted to reassign the F keys, not exactly my sort of problem but there was an answer

that suggested three Applications, well I tried them and one of them was what I was looking for.

I'm sorry for annoying you, I should have tried it earlier, because I already know this thread when posting here, but I didn't try

hard enough and so was desperate.

Thanks for your help though.

media keys on magic keyboard not working on catalina

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