The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,

I'm on v.1.10. Anyone know how I can set the space bar as the play/pause hotkey?

I've tried simply setting space bar in the hotkey prefs but it won't let me. I could swear that in v.1.0x the space bar was the default play/pause, am I out of my mind (why would they change that... )

cheers,
scott

It should still be that.

I know, weird.

play/pause is now cmd+p, when I try to replace cmd+p in the prefs by pressing spacebar in the box it rejects it (whitespace issue?), I've tried typing "spacebar" in the slot as well, no luck

File a regression bug;

Mugloch, I am using the latest version of VLC -- 1.1.1 -- which I compiled on my iMac just two days ago, and there is no problem with using the spacebar to play/pause. I suspect that your problem is related to your computer environment, and not to VLC itself.

Hey mugloch

This is correct. Space bar does not behave as expected, but it only happens when listening to audio.

In my case when tapping space bar while listening to music and having the controller selected the volume steps down one step for each tap.

Annoying, please fix this

I am using vlc 1.1.2 on xubuntu and the spacebar is not working properly for me either. Deleting the config directory doesn't solve it either.

I normally watch videos in full screen and I use spacebar for pausing and playing the video. After a certain amount of time, using spacebar to unpause the video causes it to RESTART the video from the beginning. I have searched for others experiencing this and it appears to be just me. The repo version of vlc worked fine. I can't find settings that would introduce this strange behaviour either.

So I think there is a small problem with the spacebar in 1.1.x

Did you guys try to change the hotkeys setting for "Play/Pause" in VLC's Preferences. Interestingly, it is set to cmd-p by default. However, it can be easily changed to Space.

Felix, I continue to believe that these problems with the spacebar are isolated incidents. I am currently using the latest nightly build of 1.1.3 on my 27" iMac. In all the time that I have been using VLC -- several years now -- I have never messed with the hotkey prefs. I just checked, and the play/pause hotkey is still set to command + p. I have never had a problem with using the spacebar to pause or play a video file, either at its actual size, or in full-screen mode. I am wondering if the people who are having this problem somehow, and inadvertently, corrupted one of VLC's files. Have any of you totally uninstalled VLC -- including prefs files, application support files, etc. -- and then done a new install? Has the problem persisted after doing this? Just wondering.

The problem is in fact with audio-only files. It will always work with videos. That's due to the way hot keys handling is implemented in current VLC releases for Mac.

Thanks for the explanation, Felix. I was unaware of this, being as I normally don't use VLC to play audio files. I use Vox 0.2.7.

I am using 1.1.4 on xubuntu. Still having the issue with the space bar. I am playing avi files not audio. Space bar sometimes restarts the movie from the beginning. It is set correctly in the hotkeys preferences.

@slumbergod: Please post your problem to the Linux section of this forum. Thanks!

Sorry to resurrect this old thread.

For me, space bar is lowering the volume because I have "Full Keyboard Access" enabled. This causes tab to move between all GUI controls. In OS X (and Windows too) hitting the space bar will trigger the selected control. VLC isn't overriding that, and IMO, this is the correct behavior. Full Keyboard Access is a critical accessibility feature and overriding it should never be an option. Additionally, for what it's worth, QuickTime Player X has the same problem.

What the VLC team COULD do however is have play/pause be the default selected control in this case.

No. If you don't like it, just unassign the hotkey in preferences.

Unassign what exactly? It doesn't matter what space is assigned to. It doesn't get trapped by VLC because Accessibility (full keyboard access) invokes the action instead. There's no good reason to have the volume down button be the default selected control. I don't have the source to see what is assigned as FirstResponder, but it ought to be the play/pause button, and almost surely isn't, if one was even assigned at all. I am not a developer though, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

Take a look at this screenshot. You can see the volume down button selected. This is on launch, with no media having been loaded. You can eventually tab to play/pause (after cycling through everything else).


Again, I can't see any good reason to have it this way, and it seems pretty clear that this would be a low risk fix.

Also, FWIW, you'll find that most Mac power users have full keyboard access enabled, as keyboard navigation on OS X was fairly well thought-out...it's quite efficient.

Use VLC 2.0

Awesome. Looks like 2.1.0 nightlies don't have this issue. Looking forward to the release.