Did your Play/Pause buttons stop working on your computer?

Dammit, computer....

So, here at my job, I have a Mac, and I play my Buckethead music through iTunes, much to the chagrin of my office mate.

I'll make you a Buckethead fan yet, Roommate!

However, lately, whenever I try to mute my music whenever someone walks into my office to ask me a question, my F8/Pause button does not work anymore! I wondered what was going on, and did some research.

I remembered that I had just updated my Google Play App on my Chrome Browser. I upgraded because it allows you to upload music to your Google Play account through your browser. Which is great, because I change my iTunes app a lot, and Play keeps EVERY DIFFERENT VERSION of a song I have... but that is another story.

What I FOUND, though, is that the Google Play app takes advantage of those very same media keys, so you can, for example, play and pause music playing on your browser through Google Play.

Nice, EXCEPT for one thing; it makes the shortcuts GLOBAL. Which means those shortcuts only work for Google Play. Therefore, it takes away the media keys functionality for iTunes, or any other music application you may be using the media keys for!

However, there is a rather easy way to fix and/or tweak that.



Hit the Settings menu (the stack of three hot dogs), then Extensions.

No, not that hot dog menu... but put a pin on that.

Scroll all the way to the bottom of the list and find the Keyboard Shortcut link.

Once you click on the keyboard shortcut, you'll get a floating window, showing all the keyboard shortcuts you can assign to the extensions and apps in your Chrome browser.

I, personally, have shortcuts for Window Resizer that are really handy. Now, if you look at the Google Play Music section, you can see that it has commandeered your media buttons. Which is okay, except for the fact that it is GOLBAL.

"You sunnovabitch...."

All you need to do is click the drop-down menu and choose "In Chrome", instead!

What that will do is still allow Google Play Music to use the keyboard shortcuts, but only when the Chrome Browser is selected. However, if Google Play Music is your MAIN source of music, and you want to be able to play and pause your Google Play Playlist from any application you are running, change the shortcuts to Global.

Nah. I'm good....