Bug Report: Spotify has issues dealing with media keys and shortcuts

[deepspacemillar]

Hi guys,

myself and a few friends of mine have all found an issue with controlling Spotify with media keys on keyboards etc.

There are a couple of manifestations of this:

- play/pause commands aren't always recognised (and possibly previous/forward too)

- on occasion pausing a song (when it does work) seems to mute the audio (but not in the interface) but actually continues playback. When Spotify progresses to the next song, volume is fully restored, which for many is interpreted as suddenly playing out of the blue. The song has to be paused and played again (from the interface) for the song to restore audio.

- Once the song has been paused via media key (as above) it doesn't seem to respond to subsequent attempts to resume

These bugs has been present for as long as I can remember, it would be really cool if it could get sorted 🙂

[David]

Often when running into these issues, do you have iTunes open at the same time?

[deepspacemillar]

No - in fact, I don't even have ITunes installed. The only other media players installed are Windows Media Player and VLC. This issue seems to occur regardless of them being open or closed.

[Meberem]

I was just searching to see if any other users has this issue! I'm glad to see that I am not going mad I was wondering if it was just me and my keyboard.

I am using a Logictech Wave with Media Keys if that helps to diagnose the issue and likewise don't have iTunes installed

[deepspacemillar]

The problem still exists, though the latest version(s) of Spotify seem to exhibit it in a slightly different way.

The media controls are still unreliable, although I haven't been able to replicate the problem where the player would be in a muted state but still playing. Scratch that, managed to replicate it by accident as I was writing this post...
I'll recheck this later today on my desktop to see if my Microsoft keyboard does the same thing in case it's a Logitech specific issue.

[Meberem]

After some quick experimenting it appears that the player does not correctly respond to the Play/Pause key when Spotify is not focused.

I am unsure as to why this might be the case :S

[deepspacemillar]

Yep, same - except mine doesn't reliably respond properly even when focused sometimes!

[user-removed]

Same here altough spotify DOES respond when I open Modern UI in windows 8 pro and then use the media keys but in desktop mode (even when spotify is focussed) it does not responde to the MediaPlay keystrokes etc. INstead it opens up Windows Media Player. (VLC is also installed and used to play al supported media files). Seems windows intercepts the keypresses.

I'm on a Asus n76 laptop.

[JcThreeSixty]

I cannot change the visibility setting on my starred playlist... It always returns to secret.
How do I fix that and why is there no reporting system for paying members to contact a tech services person?

[Peter__]

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@JcThreeSixty wrote:

I cannot change the visibility setting on my starred playlist... It always returns to secret.
How do I fix that and why is there no reporting system for paying members to contact a tech services person?

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That is a known bug, but its only graphical so whatever setting you choose is the one that gets used, but the client will always say "Secret". Its still being worked on. 

Peter

[aaroncouch · Accepted solution]

SOLUTION:

• Go into the System Configuration (Win Key + R, then type "msconfig").
• Click the "Services" tab
• Sort by name of service by clicking the "Service" label for that column.
• Scroll through the W's until you find a service relating to Windows Media Player (for me it was 'Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service")

I discovered this in a comment on a Logitech forum and thought I might as well give it a shot, and it worked! The comment actually said to uncheck something different: "windows sideshow for media player". I couldn't find that, so I just unchecked the only service associated with WMP, and it worked!

I was amazed, so I decided to encheck it and try using the media keys again, and they didn't work. So there is definitely an interferance happening. I still hope Spotify fixes this issue because my media keys work with everything else except Spotify, but I was happy to find this.

Also, I'm not a WMP user, so I don't know (nor care) how this affects the usage of that program.

[jocie84]

thank you totally worked! 

[Nat_Franklin]

It worked until I restarted my computer. Any ideas?