Keynote and Macbook - How to disable "play" key from starting presentation?

Great question! I don't have an answer - I merely spend a lot of time working in Keynote, and I use the Play button to stop and start music while I'm working. I wish I could prevent Keynote from starting presentation mode when I hit the Play button! Basically, disabling the Play button for slideshows in Keynote.

I hope you get an answer here!

Message was edited by: Justino

Hey, count me in too!

I use quicktime to listen to audio transcripts and type into Presenter note panel.
(why quicktime? because audio formatted audiobook, and i can use the 2x speed)

Anyone has any answers to this?
From the look of it, this might be a hardware 'feature', hence it might be pretty hard to bypass.
I'll do my own research and get back.

But if anyone has any clue, please fill us in.

Hey thanks. But, I tried.
Where I hit the wall was, trying to figure out where in the menubar of the Quicktime app I could find the menu text for Play/Pause.
There is no such thing.
I need a menu command 'text' for this Keyboard shortcuts setting (sys pref) to work.
So, because of this, I can't assign the Play command to quicktime to anything else.
The default key is the Spacebar (Play/Pause) or the F7,F8,F9 in recent keyboard setup.
For now, I just Cmd+Tab between apps when doing the transcript.
True, I could use something else for transcript and then import text afterwards.

Has anyone found a solution to this??? It's really annoying to have the presentation start when Im trying to pause my song.

Edit: I also need the next/previous buttons to work on iTunes, and they dont work unless I bring up the iTunes window!

I also just tried using apple headphones for play/pause, etc. and keynote responds to those as well! This is really annoying, I hope someone comes up with a solution to this.

The Keyboard prefs panel in System preferences lets you assign a specific keyboard shortcut to a specific menu item in a program. It does not let you unassign a built-in keyboard shortcut. Even if you try to assign F8 to something else, it won't let you.

I would also love to hear a solution on this one. I'm working in Keynote, listening to background music, and I need to pause...bam, suddenly my presentation is playing. So annoying.

No, unfortunately there is no solution to this. It is a firmware setting. Meaning, the keyboard play button. And Quicktime uses the same feature. Try for yourself. Open Quicktime. Seek anywhere in the menu the words Play, Pause, Forward or Review. There are none.
I am still looking for one, but so far, I have found none.
I am also glad that this isn't a dead topic yet.
Regards,
Radu

I think (not positive) that the Keyboard Shortcut tab in the Keyboard prefs panel in System prefs lets you override the default functions of key commands in any given app. You might want to try that.

Did you not see my post right above yours?