[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.

[kire]

The lack of global hotkeys in Spotify is currently the only thing keeping me stuck on Winamp. Seriously, I am willing to pay monthly fees if the developers are willing to add this (imho quite basic) feature.

Also, inb4 "Get AutoHotkey" 😉 I don't want another constantly running program for something so simple.

[user-removed]

I use for Pause/Play, Prev Song & Next Song my keyboard!

[user-removed]

Well, there is a simple solution to your inquiry if you use Mac OSX Lion. I suppose that you, just like me, don't want to cram your toolbar with extra icons and I also suppose that you use an external keyboard that lacks the playpause/next/previous buttons.

Here's your 5-min solution 🙂

1. Open up the Automator Application (Applications/Automator.app) 
2. Create a new document (⌘N) and choose the "Service" type for your document.
3. On the "Service receives selected" item in the top side of the window select "no input" from the dropdown.
4. Search for "Run Applescript" from the searchbar on the left side of the window.
5. Drag the "Run Applescript" item in the main window area.
6. Delete the (* Your script goes here *) line and paste this instead:

   tell application "Spotify" to playpause

7. Save your script (File > Save or ⌘S) and give it a meaningful name like Spotify PlayPause 😄
8. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and select Services from the left column.
9. Scroll down to the General Section and find your Spotify PlayPause item.
10. Click the add shortcut button and press the combination of keys that will be your shortcut. (eg. I gave it the ⌃⌘P shortcut).
11. Test that it's working by clicking on System Preferences (next to the Apple Logo on top of your screen) > Services > Spotify Play Pause. (Actually this step is necessary for the shortcut to be registered to your system).
12. You're done! Your shortcut is now available to you, in whichever program you have open.

PS. In order to create a next or previous track shortcut, you should follow the above procedure, but on step 6 you input

• tell application "Spotify" to next track
• tell application "Spotify" to previous track

respectively.

If you have any questions feel free to ask 🙂

[ModusPwnens]

 I don't know why this isn't higher on the feature list. This would be fantastic to have. 

[LuckySword]

Yep, this is one of the big things keeping me on Winamp at home.

[user-removed]

The solution proposed by modacular works great and as he said it only takes about 5 minutes.  I got play/pause, forward, and next with no hassle.

[Wurdo]

The solution from modacular might be great for Apple users. But windows doesn't have that unfortunately.
Thx for all the comments and kudo's, i hope this idea get through!

[MusicPim]

I could really use global hotkeys

[lucferron]

+1 for that... I don't understand global hotkeys not being in all media players. You don't want to pop a window everytime you got to pause it to talk to someone... Even Like/Dislike for radio stations should be global hotkeys.

[lucferron]

There is a plugin at the moment that can help you with this. I just tried it and it solves my problem... It would be better if it would be built in spotify but this is better than nothing. It is called Toastify.

http://toastify.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/79962