Rewind, Play/Pause, Skip buttons not working?

I know this is an old post, but I just stumbled on it today... and it worked for me!

The only difference was that I recently installed the Plex Media Server at home and the corresponding plugin to Google Chrome. It was the same deal though... go through and x out of the play/pause buttons.

Bam -- back to normal.

Over 3 years later since OP... same issue here just now with Magic Keyboard/iMac/iTunes. Never experienced before. Working fine the other day. High Sierra's been installed since a week or two after release. No other recent updates or system changes made (no Google Play that I know about). Plus, Magic Keyboard and MM2 have both been exhibiting bizarre problems at same time; battery level suddenly very low w/o much use, disconnected/won't connect,....etc. MM2 worse.

I had this problem too but it seems it was VLC hijacking the iTunes keys (rewind(F7)/play/pause(F8) and forward(F9)). I have simply changed all of them in VLC preferences/hotkeys which originally were assigned to F1 ... F9 to not "set yet", and all keys work fine now, after restarting the MacBook Pro with all the latest updates. Silly good old VLC (Version 2.2.8 Weatherwax (Intel 64bit)), they need to tweak the preferences a bit.

FINALLY!!! Apple released update 10.13.2 on December 6th that FIXED this bug (for me). I didn't see anything specific in the documentation about this function being addressed so guessing it was one of the kernel or other patches that did it. So nice to have this basic feature back. Thanks for only taking over a year to make it happen Apple! 😮

Here is the link to the recent update documentation: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208331

If you haven't done the update yet and you've had this issue, dong this update might just solve it for you as it did for me.

Cheers!

For all those who don't have google chrome/play this solution works.

1. Restart your Mac in Safe Mode (press the Shift-key when hearing the chime sound and keep it pressed until you see the grey Apple-logo and the progress bar).
2. Log in as usual.
3. Open iTunes and try the media keys - you won't hear any music playing as Safe Mode prevents that but you will see that the media keys now function again because Safe Mode cleared out some caches that were behaving in a naughty way).
4. Restart normally (don't hold any keys).
5. Open iTunes and enjoy the media keys again.

I have this question as well but this solution did not work. First, off, am I missing something? I opened up Chrome browser and did not find the settings mentioned here. And, I do not use the Google Play feature as described that is supposedly hijacking the 'media function' buttons. For me, it seems after I upgraded to OS 10.13 is when this issue started! Anyone figure this out yet?

Thanks!

Antonio

After some further investigation, I am noticing this:

• The Rewind, Play/Pause, Skip buttons DO work in iTunes SOME OF THE TIME.

• The times it works are when the iTunes window is actually open!

• The buttons also work if I navigate to another open window on the Desktop that DOES NOT have media related controls. (for example: any random web page, a word processing program, etc...)

• If I navigate somewhere such as a web page with YouTube the buttons all of a sudden will not point towards iTunes any more and will then be linked to the controls on that page.

This is an issue for me because - say I am playing music, web browsing, and then decide to want to play a video on YouTube. When I go to the play-pause control on my keyboard (which I am used to doing), it will no longer pause the music playing in iTunes. So I have to manually navigate back to iTunes to pause the music.

The controls will then also NOT be activated to play the music in iTunes again from anywhere else UNTIL I navigate back to iTunes. This for me feats the purpose of such a button. I want that button to ONLY work for starting and stopping whatever I have cued up in iTunes - nothing else.

So, my advice to Apple (if they might ever read this) is, at least, if you want to make it the Rewind, Play/Pause, Skip buttons assignable, do not do it randomly based on what window is open, offer users a "preference" in which WE can decide how we would like to use those controls.

This happens frequently enough that I would need restart my computer 10 times a day. Not a solution. There is a deeper issue happening here where these controls are getting hijacked by other software with no settings available to tell the OS to STAY PUT and ONLY control iTunes.

Sometimes the issue is resolved if u restart.. Sometimes the settings (I'm not sure where is altered). If u are intending on using these keys for iTunes then once the laptop restarts, instead of opening your itunes directly, just click the play button. Not only can u find it fixed, but also u can navigate ur music library using the Rewind-Play-Forward buttons.

I can confirm it is Chrome. I had the same issue and followed guidance posted here but I just removed Chrome and files in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome

It didn't even need a restart, and music controls again started working with iTunes.

I don't know how you all feel about this but I am absolutely disgusted that Google would do this, and I hope Apple stops this continuous intrusion of Google into the Apple's ecosystem.

None of the above solutions worked for me & my mac until I found this: https://www.askdavetaylor.com/restore-itunes-function-keys-mac-system/

I had check this out, but the box was not checked/clicked. I checked/click it. I then opened it after reading the article the link goes to & unchecked it. BOOM! Solved!

Deleted Chrome (it wasn't a problem anyway, but was being cautious.) Checked for any other 'Google Play' or 'Spotify' relics - nothing. Quit, restarted, quit, restarted iTunes - no luck. I don't use Plex, do not have PPT or Keynote open.

In short, nothing here helps me at ALL. Except one thing: I, too, did not experience this until macOS 10.13 (High Sierra.) That is the only common factor - yet I cannot fix this darn thing! Anyone else have any new fangled ideas?

I just worked out a fix for this. I deleted the Amazon Music App, the buttons started working fine for iTunes so I re-installed the Amazon App and the buttons now work for both iTunes and Amazon. Using High Sierra and iTunes 12.7.1.14

Ok, I lied! It did help temporarily only because the buttons work fine once I restart. And, I've now narrowed it down to the problem being with Safari! Whenever I open a web page with any kind of media content, Safari hijacks the media button controls to use for that webpage and they no longer then control iTunes. Even if I go back to the iTunes window, the buttons no longer work. I just turning off all of the "auto-play" options in Safari's "Website" preferences (Preferences > Websites > Auto-Play). I'll let you know if that does it. The journey continues...

Thanks for sharing this. In general for me, any restart with allow the media buttons to work again specifically with iTunes as I believe they should be full time without interruption. The challenge that myself and others have had is that somewhere along the way the buttons are getting hijacked by other software and it seems different people have had different issues or culprits as to what software was taking over those functions. I recently thought a security patch did the trick but turns out that I at least narrowed it down for me that it is Safari that is the culprit. Anytime I open a window that plays any kind of video or media, the media buttons no longer work for iTunes and are then linked to the media browser window that was opened. Continuing to do some trouble shooting to see if I can narrow down the change of events and a potential fix.