If you listen to music from iTunes or Spotify desktop applications on Mac or Windows, the media keys on your keyboard simply won’t work for them as before when Google Chrome v74 or higher version, is running, here is a fix for this issue.
Google Chrome 74 set to release on April 23 with dark mode support for Windows 10 and the browser out of the box supports multimedia keys on your hardware keyboard on Mac, Windows and Chrome OS, the Media session API required for this already enabled in Chrome 73.
Disable keyboard’s multimedia keys support in Chrome browser
With upcoming Chrome release, for a video playing on YouTube, by using multimedia keys on the keyboard, users can able to stop, pause, seek forward/backward. Chrome listens to key presses and responds even if it is minimized and when other applications are active.
For instance, if you’ve Chrome minimized or open and if you play songs in Spotify or iTunes, multimedia keys simply won’t’ work for them as they did before, they’ve been taken over by Chrome browser.
Its nice to use your keyboard media keys to control media playing in Chrome, but keyboard commands shouldn’t stop working for applications that worked before, which is case at the moment, to use multimedia keys for controlling songs playing in iTunes or Spotify app, you need to disable keyboard media key handling support in Chrome, here is how you can do that.
1. Visit about:flags
2. Search for “Hardware Media Key handling”
3. Select “Disabled”.
4. Restart the browser
