The VideoLAN Forums

Mac Media Keys (Previous, Play/Pause, Fast Forward) on mac keyboards are controlling VLC 1.0 and Itunes. I would like it to just control Itunes and I cant find a way to stop it. It only started doing this after the update. I would rather not revert back to .9 I like keeping things up to date but if I have to I will.

We will add an option to disable this feature in VLC 1.0.1., which will be released within the next 2 or 3 weeks. Please stay tuned.

I hate to complain, but I have to say this is a pretty bad bug. Apple's media programs that use these keys (is it just iTunes and Quicktime?) try to be sensible about sharing them, but at any rate the key press only goes through to one program. It's a relatively safe assumption that any Mac will have iTunes running at any given time so that makes the keys unusable in VLC. My preference is to keep an instance of VLC pretty much constantly and now I can't pause music to pick up the phone without some video starting. Please, if there's even some option in the preference file that isn't in the interface could you point me at it? I looked through it but couldn't find anything obvious. Otherwise I'm going to have to go back to an older version.

EDIT:PS Thanks for letting us turn off the scroll wheel. I have a Logitech mouse with a free spinning wheel and it used to go crazy sometimes.

Regrettably, there is no way for you to disable this behaviour within the provided build. The necessary code was already written (after 1.0.0 was finished), but is not part of the public release.

just registered to say this bug is incredibly annoying!

Well, this is incredibly annoying bug is a long wanted feature by other users. Anyway, the option will be in 1.0.1, which will be out in 2 or 3 weeks.

Hi again. I was looking at the bug report on this and it seems like I should clarify the problem as I'm experiencing it. The summary says:

We need these 2 options as some users complained about VLC blocking other apps from getting the respective events.

The problem is actually that VLC is NOT blocking iTunes from receiving the keyboard events. For example, if I have both iTunes and VLC open at the same time, hitting the play button causes both applications to start playing. I believe this is a incorrect behavior, as with Apple's own applications only one program will receive the event at a time. Some quick experimenting seems to indicate that the event goes to the application that was most recently in the front.

An option to turn this feature off is a good start, but I think the feature itself will have to be reworked before most people consider using it. I understand this may be difficult if Apple's programs use some undocumented method to see which program should accept the key events.

This is a very good point. I already have an idea how to adapt VLC to block iTunes from receiving further calls, if desired by the user

just registered to say this bug too.

but i was surprised by the amazing staff support of Videolan, congratulation for the forum , and for this amazing app. One of the most important in every computer ever.

Same here, just registered for this bug.

This is the best VLC release ever, but the Mac media keys issue is quite annoying.

By now I'll be satisfied if you just provide a switch for turning this /feature/ off. A better solution would be allowing the Mac keys control VLC _only_ when the app is the current active window.

Thanks in advance

I registered to report this bug too (or rather the lack of option to turn this feature off) -- glad to see it's already on the list

vlc 1.0.1 , thank you very much.

Thanks for VLC 1.0.1 !!!

The "Control with media keys" and "...when VLC is in background" options have solved the issue

I registered JUST to say how annoying this 'feature' is. It's been a real pain in the butt. My opinion is that you should not have implemented it until it came with the option to disable it from controlling iTunes as well. And many comments around the internet would agree with that opinion. But I guess all is well now.

Thanks for the continued development.

THis is ALREADY fixed.

hi guys,

i'm having issues getting this to work for me. can someone help me out with what options should be selected?

i've tried a combination of all and iTunes still persists on opening/playing.

VLC version? Mac OS version?

VLC: 1.0.1
OSX: 10.6.1

I read one of Felix's posts that its a generic issue that needs to be fixed by Apple. True?

Correct, yes.

This worked for me.
http://nomitsu-kronos.hd.free.fr/downlo ... file=mmfix

Running it a second time removes the patch apparently
although this is not made clear in the readme if I recall.

Hmm, am I the only one for whom the chosen solution is not great? I am running 1.1.12, in this version I notice that if VLC is in the background, the media keys (as well as the remote) go to iTunes.
I am not sure what kind of algorithm is used (nor if it's a VideoLan or Apple thing), but if iTunes is *not* running and VLC is playing in the background, pressing play/pause will start iTunes. This is quite annoying.

Is there any way to change this behaviour?

I for one love this feature, although I can imagine those who use iTunes might want to be able to turn it off.

I wish I knew how to turn those controls off in iTunes! I'm tempted to just delete the whole application..

AFAIK these keys are send to the application which was last active. This works pretty fine for me. Maybe you have accidentally activated iTunes in between.