No keyboard shortcuts for playing / resuming video clips?

I found you can press the tab key, to get into the video, then space starts/stops, and left/right go forwards/backwards through the frame.

You'll then need to hit tab again to get out of video control mode.

Not perfect, but it works.

This is all the Photos Help file has on the subject:

Slideshows

Action	Shortcut
Stop playing a slideshow	Press the Escape (Esc) key, or move the pointer to show the slideshow controls, then click the Close button (X)
Pause a slideshow or resume playing	Space bar
Move through slides in a slideshow manually	Right Arrow or Left Arrow

Tell Apple what missing features you'd like restored or new features added in Photos via https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html.

This doesn't work! I'm not sure what version of the Photos app or OS X you have but this doesn't work for Photos 1.1 on El Capitan 10.11. Pressing the space bar just toggles between full screen view and thumbnail view for me.

If you're looking at your list of photos, pressing space will toggle the photo/video to fill the space.

Once your video is big, press the TAB key, and then space will start/stop the video. Shift-tab doesn't seem to go back to size toggle mode as I would expect, but you can press TAB twice to get back to size-toggle. Once will get you to the sidebar, second gets you back to size-toggle.

This is on Photos 1.2 on El Capitan 10.11.1 that I've just rechecked, but when I originally posted the answer (and checked) it was a previous version of Photos & El Capitan, so was either the version you're on, or an earlier one.

Thanks! This worked for me! The TAB and then space to start/stop videos is a few extra keystrokes but it's actually faster for me to view all my videos this way compared to using the trackpad/mouse.

By the way, hitting control+TAB and then space also works with getting back to the size-toggle mode.

For me Tab-then-Space doesn't work.

BUT

Tab-then-L does.

Also pressing more L-s makes it faster.

Found also that Arrows do the frame-steps.
Also try Command+Arrows 🙂

Completely non-obvious.

And couldn't get out of this mode by any shortcut 😟

Here's another way.

Tab - L - Right Arrow

After that, video will pause and then the space key is going to play/pause.

Sometimes it doesn't work in first time. Close/open the video and then try same things. And also you can press the right arrow 2-3 times.

It works in Photos 1.5.

I find it superannoying that Mac has play button in keyboard that doesn't work!

For me Tab-then-Space doesn't work.

BUT

Tab-then-Command+Right does.

But it gives a fast mode 😉

Completely non-obvious.

And couldn't get out of this mode by any shortcut 😟