Play/Pause and stop media keys not working

Anonymous
2022-01-24T02:02:23+00:00

Hi everyone,

So I've got a weird problem, and I haven't found anyone else with the same issue.

For some reason the play/pause and stop media keys on my keyboard (K55) aren't working. If I test it on keyboardchecker.com it says MediaPlayPause and MediaStop, so the keys itself do work. I've tried it with both Spotify and VLC, and it they not do anything. Other keys like previous track, next track and volume controls work fine. It's just the play/pause and stop keys that don't work. Nothing happens.

Anybody got any clue as to what's going wrong here?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Input and language

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  1. Paulo GM 72,645 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2022-01-24T04:36:23+00:00

    Unfortunately, I'm out of ideas and I'm very sorry Martijn. Maybe somebody in the community has better suggestions for you.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-01-24T04:21:39+00:00

    Just to clarify, when I say that I exited the browser, I mean that I did so by going to the menu top right and clicking exit. That way all running extensions also get terminated. But either way, as far as I can see I don't have any media related extensions installed.

    I already have VLC set as the default music and video player in Windows settings. Still I tried changing them to a different program, relaunched explorer, and the keys still didn't work.

    Plugging the keyboard into a different port (front i/o instead of motherboard) didn't change anything either. But I really don't think it's hardware related, because as I said, the keyboard tester is registering the media keys. They're just not functioning in Windows. I even tried the keyboard on my Win10 laptop, and the keys work fine there.

    I also tried turning off 'Show desktop overlay when using media keys' like you said, but that didn't change anything either.

    I'm really stumped :/

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  3. Paulo GM 72,645 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2022-01-24T03:43:21+00:00

    Hi Martijn,

    Do you have extensions on your browser that you suspect could hijack the media keys even when the browsers are closed, specifically Google play music or other media player extensions? Please try disabling them if you have and see if that works

    Another thing, try setting a default media player and see if that fixes the problem. Go to Settings > Apps > Default apps > Music then choose a player. Do the same with Videos and try setting VLC as default and see if that would work.

    If still not working, since you mentioned that you have an external keyboard, try plugging it into another port and see if it's just a simple connection problem.

    For Spotify, try toggling on/off the option "Show desktop overlay using media keys" in (...) > Edit > Preferences > Display

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-01-24T03:29:46+00:00

    Just tried it, and the same thing happens as with other media players. Play/pause and stop keys don't do anything, previous and next track keys do work.

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  5. Paulo GM 72,645 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2022-01-24T03:14:44+00:00

    Hi Martijn,

    How about when using the browser, does it work when playing/pausing on a youtube video for example? Have you tried enabling the media keys there and check if it'll work on online videos or Spotify for web?

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