Spotify keyboard controls not working
Here is another link i have found that help me and its the same solutions as k2shah mention it, but with more details.
Instead of downloading the spotify_control, you use the D-Bus commands. Before you add it as a new keyboard command, feel free to execute those commands.
Play/Stop
dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.PlayPause
Next
dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Next
Previous
dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Previous
Once you validate the above commands, feel free to add them as Key Shortcut. For Ubuntu, "Settings > Devices > Keyboard" than add (+) and put the name and copy the commands, than put the keyboard shortcut.
TheLink
There is a simple solution credit goes to this thread on Spotify forum, Thanks to schuellerf and rszabla. The solution is pretty simple and works on any Linux distribution.
- Download this file, extract it and make it executable
chmod a+x spotify_control
- Place it anywhere you want, I'll assume that it is placed in Downloads folder
- Go to settings -> keyboard -> keyboard shortcuts -> custom shortcuts
- Add new shortcut by clicking the plus button, I'll override the default play/pause/next and previous keys because I only listen to music on spotify, If you need those shortcuts then assign different ones for Spotify
The command you see in the picture above is for 'play/pause' function
/home/your_username/Downloads/spotify_control playpause
The commands that are available
/home/your_username/Downloads/spotify_control playpause
/home/your_username/Downloads/spotify_control previous
/home/your_username/Downloads/spotify_control next
/home/your_username/Downloads/spotify_control play
/home/your_username/Downloads/spotify_control stop
Please note that you have to do this
/home/your_username/Downloads/spotify_control playpause
Because
~/Downloads/spotify_control playpause
That won't work, at least not in Ubuntu 16.04, unity desktop, the shortcut manager doesn't seem to understand the tilde ~
The top-voted solutions are about adding a custom key mapping, which is kinda cumbersome, as you have to drop every other binding related to the Play/Pause key.
There's only one binding possible for a key so it means that your Play/Pause key stops working anywhere outside Spotify.
Initially, I wanted to do that, but Ubuntu settings didn't let me create a binding so the key was used/captured by something else on my system.
It turned out that Chrome captures hardware media keys by default :)
You can disable this functionality by opening
chrome://flags/
and then disabling
Hardware Media Key Handling
feature.
After doing so, your Play/Stop key along with Next and Previous keys are handled by Ubuntu itself again.
It fixed the issue for me. Now Spotify is the one to capture these keys.