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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

57 answers

Sort by: Newest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2022-11-01T18:58:49+00:00

    My work laptop all of a sudden now has this issue - even the Play/Pause button on my Arctis 7's stopped working. I know it's not hardware because the skip forward and back functions work and use the same button on my Arctis 7's, and my personal PC uses the same keyboard/headset and the Play/Pause buttons work.

    I tried looking at the human interface editor and it's running (but I can't restart it as this is disabled). Super annoying!

    Edit: I just saw the post about Teams and confirmed, shutting down Teams enables the Play/Pause buttons on both my keyboard and Arctis 7's. No less annoying as I rely on Teams for work and can't have it disabled.

    Hey MS - FIX IT!

    Was this answer helpful?

    4 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2022-11-01T08:03:13+00:00

    This fixed it for me also!

    Have a Logitech MX keyboard.

    Was this answer helpful?

    3 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2022-10-31T18:20:37+00:00

    This is the exact thing that was happening to me. I couldn't find a pattern, but I use MS Teams all day long. When I shut down Teams, my play button immediately started working.

    How do we post a bug for Teams for this? I think it's holding onto something in the audio HW after a call that it should be letting go.

    Was this answer helpful?

    5 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2022-10-29T00:57:45+00:00

    This is exactly what happens to me sometimes when I hit play/pause... Teams starts playing the call ringing sound even though there isn't a call taking place...

    Sure enough killing teams fixed the issue for me as well... Man the Teams code base is SO shoddy.

    Was this answer helpful?

    10 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2022-10-28T23:04:04+00:00

    So this only works when you close/reopen Teams UNTIL you make/receive a phone call (we use Teams phone system) so this doesn't help actually solve the problem for me unfortunately.

    Is there a way to stop Teams from hijacking my media controls permanently?

    Was this answer helpful?

    8 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments