[Desktop] Global HotKeys for Pause/Play, Skip, etc.

[Wurdo]

It would be nice to have an Global Hotkey so you can pause/play your music while browsing and not switching between screens. Or when you are gaming and you want another song but you don't want to alt tab and stay idle, a (customizable?)  Global Hotkey(i.g. ctrl+shift+right) would be such an great improvement in the usefulness of Spotify.

[nadehi18]

On Ubuntu 14.04, its as easy as setting certain keys in system settings for shortcuts, but I can't find anything for Windows, unfortunately.

[mildfuzz]

This ticket is almost 3 years old, with almost 400 votes. It's not a difficult thing to implement, why has it not been prioritised? 

[user-removed]

I want global hotkeys for like/dislike on currently playing radio station.

[Plokit]

I like this. But with the last update, I'm not sure we'll be seeing any improvments to Spotify. It's going downhill like all the other well known programs these days. So sad to see an awesome service go down like this. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll fix it. But no company fixes their stuff after they mess it up these days. Ugh. Please Spotify, add this, and fix your program. 😄   <--- I smiled for you Spotify Devs, so you should fix it now. lol. 😄 😄 😄 😄

[qo-naq]

In mac osx it is very easy to add a global shortcut.

Do this:

Assign your own keyboard shortcuts to menu commands in any OS X app or in the Finder. This may be useful if, for example, one of the “global” shortcuts, which works the same in most apps, is used by one app for a different purpose. In this case, you can assign it a different key combination.

Create keyboard shortcuts only for existing menu commands. You can’t define keyboard shortcuts for general purpose tasks such as opening an app or switching between apps.

1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Keyboard.
2. Click Shortcuts, select App Shortcuts, then click Add (+).
3. Choose an app from the Application pop-up menu. If you want to set the same key combination for a menu command that appears in many apps, choose All Applications.

   If the app you want to select does not appear in the list, choose Other and locate it using the Open dialog. Some apps may not allow you to set keyboard shortcuts.

4. Type the menu command for which you want to set a keyboard shortcut in the Menu Title field.

   You must type the command exactly as it appears in the Application menu, including ellipses and any other punctuation. An ellipsis is a special character that looks like three periods. To type an ellipsis, press Option-semicolon, or use the Character Viewer. It may be difficult to know whether the command is written in the menu with a real ellipsis or with three periods, so if one does not work, try the other.

5. Click in the Keyboard Shortcut field, press the key combination that you want to assign to the menu command, then click Add.

   You can’t use each type of key (for example, a letter key) more than once in a key combination.

6. Quit and restart any apps you’re using for the new keyboard shortcut to take effect.

If you assign a keyboard shortcut that already exists for another command or another app, your new shortcut won’t work. Find the menu command that’s using it and reassign the keyboard shortcut for that item.

To remove a customized shortcut, click Delete (–).

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH13916?locale=en_US

This works every version everywhere.. on mac 🙂

[sjug]

Who cares about OSX.

[olaf-olaf]

I figured out a workaround for Windows. It takes a few technical steps but works perfectly, at least on my system.

1. Download Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express 

2. Download the source code for AutoHotkey_L

3. Follow the instructions: 

• Open AutoHotkeyx.sln in VC++ 2010 Express.
• Select the appropriate Build and Platform.
• Build.

(Make sure to choose "Release", so that you will compile an EXE file. I couldn't get it working with x64, but Win32 works fine.)

4. Create a file named AutoHotkey.ahk in your username's Documents folder.

5. See the original AutoHotkey documentation, especially the quick start tutorial and list of keys. The documentation is not very user friendly, but keep reading and you'll get it eventually.

6. Remap your keyboard in the AutoHotkey.ahk file.

My example configuration (Ducky Shine 3 keyboard):

Launch_App1::Send {Media_Prev}
Launch_Mail::Send {Media_Play_Pause}
Browser_Home::Send {Media_Next}

This remaps the three keys (My Computer, Mail, Browser home) at Ducky's upper right corner as Previous Song, Play/Pause, Next Song. Of course, you'll have to invent the best configuration for your own keyboard.

7. Add AutoHotkey.exe to your Windows startup.

• Create a shortcut for the EXE file.
• Select the folder All Programs > Start-up, and click Open, which takes you directly into C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup (on Windows 8.1).
• Copy the shortcut there.

Voilà.

Bonus tip: check out this algorithmic list of "every" musical style with representative samples. Clicking » first opens a view of artists and then links to their respective Spotify pages. With your newly configured keyboard, you can open an interesting genre/artist and easily browse through the songs without switching windows.

Olli

Finland

[laptopleon]

Why am I directed here from https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Add-keyboard-shortcut-to-go-to-current-song-playing/id... to here? This is no solution for the lack of a 'jump to current track' feature either as a menu or keyboard shortcut.

[AlexandrePiccin]

@olaf-olaf

BLOODY HELL
HAHAHAH

Mate, I appreciate your great effort, but I guess that when you need to download Visual C++ to turn around something as simple as multimedia keys, you're going way too far. Users weren't supposed to go through such effort for something so simple

Spotify Tech buddies, please shed a little attention on us, please 🙂

My problem is a little bit less alarming, but still I would like to see it fixed in later updates: My laptop keyboard is doing aces with Play/Pause, Forward and Backward keys, Stop is not responding though.

I need to use the Backward key (to get back to the beginning of the track) and Pause (to pause, of course hahah) for it. I guess it would be nicer to have my pause button working as usual, anyway.

Notice: Differently, when I use the stop key from my Microsoft 3000 Wireless Keyboard (therefore not the laptop built-in keyboard), it is understood simply as a "Pause".

As a experienced user, I guess the best to do, since there are different keyboards and, therefore, different bindings, is to let the user bind his multimedia keys by himself with a built-in wizard. Lets say you're running Spotify by the first time in a computer, a wizard asks you to press these multimedia keys to learn the bindings. 🙂

I dunno, that's just my sincere opinion. I hope the people at the tech will see this and try to implement if they think that it is a good idea 🙂

[bmahan]

I opened my keyboard Microsoft Ergonomic 4000 v1.0 and just changed the brower forward and back ward buttons to change tracks. Works like a charm. So if you have extra hotkeys on your keyboard it should be simple. Especially one like I have.