Mac play/pause button problem iTunes/Spotify

Hi.

It's the same for me, i can't solve the problem by turn off iTunes, in that case iTunes starts.. There have to be some solution of that?

Yeah, it's really really annoying!

I think the problem is less about the computer just doing what you're telling it to, and more about the computer not being clever enough to know what you mean when you perform the potentially ambiguous action. Ideally, Spotify and iTunes would know which app was currently active and send the command to the correct app. A slightly less complex solution would be options in both Spotify and iTunes to enable/disable media player controls!!

I just began having this problem after upgrading to Snow Leopard. Now iTunes launches (even if it wasn't running) whenever I hit the media keys while Spotify is running.

As was already mentioned, Quicktime X and iTunes clearly implement something that allows them to share the media keys without both responding to them at the same time. Spotify needs to do this as well. I used to be able to just quit iTunes and be fine, but now it launches whenever I press a media-key and starts responding to subsequent key presses, making the media keys unusable with Spotify.

The same for me. I have just upgrade to Snow Leopard, and when I press Start Button iTunes starts.

Do anyone knows if there is a solution?
I have looked for an option on iTunes, but nothing founded.

Thanks

I also have the same problem with Snow Leopard, very annoying@

If you have at least one application downloaded from the App Store, a workaround is to stop any music currently playing in iTunes, select your applications in the source list on the left, then close the window.

I'm pretty sure iTunes still gets the button presses sent to it along with Spotify, but as none of the buttons apply to downloaded applications, iTunes won't do anything, but Spotify, it being rather musical by default, will.

Since i never use iTunes, renaming the Application did the trick for me...

$ sudo mv iTunes.app/ iWantToBeLeftAlone

Don't call it .app or if you do, never open it. If you do, the app registers as a media button listener again and you start all over.

After upgrading to Snow Leopard, never before, whenever the play/pause keyboard button is pressed iTunes will open, even if it has never been opened or was completely exited at the time.

One hacky solution is to select the iTunes Store homepage in iTunes, it then ignores the play/pause button.

same here, after upgrading to snow leopard.

As people are reporting the problem is getting much more annoying after the Snow Leopard upgrade even though I guess it's the same core issue as in Leopard.

While giving it some of the good old google magic I found this conversation on the cocoa-dev mailing list which seems to address the issue from a programmers perspective. It's about a year old but it might hopefully be of some use.

http://bit.ly/4NChY (Using a short url since the full url contained a @ which getsatisfaction seems to choke at, link info available at http://bit.ly/info/4NChY so you can verify that it's not pointing at some spam/virus-thingy)

Would probably be great if this was forwarded to the programmers, maybe it can be of some use. Anyway, would be great to see the issue fixed asap!

Reported 9 months ago (presumably on a dev build) but it isn't worked out yet? Come on Spotify keep up!

Happened to me after installing Snow Leopard. So annoying.

yepp, happend to me too... Installed snow leopard and after that, every time I press the play button on my dashboard itunes launches automatically...why!? In leopard this was a non-issue...

Andres - its not that simple. When using Quicktime I can press the play/pause button (when Quicktime is not the focused window) and it will pause playback without loading itunes. As someone mentioned further back up in the thread the application that previously had focus reacts. Can you not do the same thing?

@Andreas : can you fwd Sam's link to the programmers ? :-)

I have little experience programming for mac, but there is a window/app hierarchy that one should be able to use (as suggested above) to figure out which one is the appropriate action to take...

This only happened when I upgraded to snow leapord... If i dont have itunes open pressing the play button opens itunes

It's best to have one. Spotify If you have not got iphone/ Ipod touch ect.
iTunes if you have Ipod Touch/ iPhone.

(The Second one is if you want apps. Because you can download from amazon)! But if you want to listen to A full song instead of 30 seconds.
Then I'm very sorry, but I don't know!

Beware, programmer speak ahead!

Spotify needs to devide if it should react to the pressing of a media key.
If iTunes, VLC, QuickTime or any other application is active, the answer is no (that app will do its thing and that's all).
Otherwise, it needs to act upon the event (media key pressed) and stop it from propagating to other applications. I believe this is the behaviour of iTunes, Quicktime, etc.

This should be an "easy" fix i guess... Very annoying indeed! But I'm hopefull and hold my thumbs the Spotify Team will fix this soon!

I have found a 'workaround' for this. I've posted it here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.j...

Hope it works!!

This should be fixed by the spotify-team, as quickfixes are not really for the public. I would ́nt mind an update of the spotify app for this single reason alone because this bug is annoying as hell!

Actually. I think my issue is slightly different. After installing snow-leopard, itunes opens automatically when I hit play/pause if no other program overrides it. ex. If quicktime is open, itunes will not open.

I'm waiting for Spotify to fix this issue since I don't want do these temporary fixes. Fix it Spotify!!

VERY annoying. This should be top priority for the Spotify devs.

Dear People of Spotify, please do something, this is really annoying.

Can there not be a menu option in the Spotify preferences that disables support for the media keys? I use iTunes more than Spotify, but I like to have Spotify open.

Why don't Spotify just put some pressure on Apple to fix this problem?

It's not like it would be a fight.
The more companies that report this problem to Apple the more reason for them to look at it. It's not like it could be a big disadvantage to Apple?

Ok I filed a bug with Apple for this (a while ago). They've come back saying basically that things are working as intended on their end. (I've replied back saying people are taking extreme measures to solve this problem, and that they should be concerned, erh, but emotions and bug reports usually don't mix : )

I suppose it's up to Spotify. The new Quicktime Player X turns off this behaviour. Spotify should be able to do it too?

(But really, I think these buttons should turn up somewhere in the System Preferences so that WE can decide which app gets launched. It's OUR buttons!!! Vive la people! : )

Omg, the only thing that needs to be done is to prevent ITunes to open (when its closed) when you press the play-button. This automatic opening of the software hi-jacks the play button from every other software and is new with Snow Leopard I think.

There must be a way to prevent Itunes from opening, and don't come with the fix that shuts of the buttons in itunes, they are needed once the ITunes is open.

Should be easy for apple to fix.

I have worked out a fix and it's a good one.
If you download DockDodger (http://foggynoggin.com/dockdodger)
And then Undock iTunes. Run it once it's undocked, then put it on iTunes Store and close the window. Now itunes will not show, will not play anything, or interrupt your music-listening!
And the only time you'll see it is when you login!

This is not really a fix, but you can use the spacebar to play/pause spotify. at least thats what i do to work around this problem until spotify solves this problem..

edit: forgot to mention that unfortunately i think spotify have to be the active program dough...

The unique solution.
Install Candelair. It disables running iTunes when pushing play/pause button.

http://www.iospirit.com/labs/candelair/

ivalegre - no it doesn't?

Candelair doesn't support Spotify. Tried it and it's not in the compatibility list.

Andres wrote: "We could disable support for Spotify completely but I'm not sure people want that."

And I can stop paying my yearly fee and delete Spotify = no more money from me and I will never say good words to future users.. How about that?

This is a really frustrating bug. Spotify needs to implement the Quicktime behaviour.

It'd also be good if I could control spotify with my remote.

@Pete, I have found a script that does it, but then there is the same annoying problem with iTunes: it jumps up as soon as you press the play button.

This must be fixable - as if you open DVD player and press play/pause etc, it just plays and pauses DVD player - and doesn't open itunes. If itunes is open, it still only affects DVD player.

This must be possible...