Music Controls via Keyboard

Question

Music Controls via Keyboard

Hi all,

As most of you know, all of the newer Apple keyboards (including those built into the Macbooks and Macbook Pros) have special function keys that range from screen brightness to volume control. My friend sadly has an older keyboard in which there are no special function keys, only F1, F2, F3, etc...yet he would like to be able to control iTunes through the keyboard. I have tried to do the following:

...yet even with the *Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys* button clicked, only the Previous and Next buttons work, not Play. Even then however, I have to have the iTunes window open right in front of me for Previous and Next to work.

What can I do to make my friend's standard function keys act as music controls regardless of which application he is in?

Thanks for your time!

Macbook Pro (6,2), iPhone 3GS iOS4.0.2 16GB, Mac OS X (10.6.4), 2.66GHz Intel Core i7, 8GB 1067 MHz DDR3, 256GB Crucial SSD

Posted on Sep 5, 2010 8:05 PM

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Answer 1

A.Carlo

Level 2

270 points

Sep 5, 2010 8:34 PM in response to alexyoung1992

The problem, as shown in your image, is that your keyboard assignments are specific to iTunes only, instead of "All Applications". For hotkeys to trigger from anywhere, those keybinds must be in "All Applications". This necessitates that you write a script (⇪) for each action and assign keys (⇪) to those scripts.

Or you could just use something like GimmeSomeTune (⇪).

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Answer 2

Sep 12, 2010 2:36 PM in response to A.Carlo

Thanks, that helped a lot! Are there any other programs like FastScript that allow you to assign keys to apple scripts, but are free?

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Answer 3

A.Carlo

Level 2

270 points

Sep 12, 2010 6:23 PM in response to alexyoung1992

alexyoung1992 wrote:
Are there any other programs like FastScript that allow you to assign keys to apple scripts, but are free?

If you're still trying to assign keys to iTunes functions, then my previous link to GimmeSomeTunes is the only one I've used before. The key assignments are in the application's preferences (➚), not in System Preferences. You can also assign star ratings to songs using the keyboard.

However, if you're looking to do this with other applications other than iTunes, then I'd recommend you look at Quicksilver (➚), which has a bit of a learning curve (and does far more than what you're asking). You can check out how it works with scripts (➚) over at MacDevCenter (it's down towards the middle of the page). That article is old, but it's still a good overview of how to assign keys to scripts using Quicksilver.

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