Play/Pause and stop media keys not working

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 :/

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

Ok so this issue has been there since the update on 14th of Jan as on my PC Atleast and to be sure enough i ve tried to my extreme as i could and found out that the issue was with the OS itself to some extent. Windows Media Player is the only app that responds alone to the play/pause/next/prev and none other app would even detect it(not even when i increase my vol through buttons). Also none of the keys work for me (Play/Pause/Stop/Next/Prev) [Windows Media player is an exception though] Could anyone just see if any other thing left or so?

Just wanted to reply and say I have been having the same issues for a few weeks now. My play pause media key stopped working, but volume controls and forward/back song buttons all work. Could it be a windows update that caused this issue?. According to a different Thread i was reading Microsoft answers pause not working It could be an issue with discord if you have discord installed. Playing some media with discord is breaking the play pause button. You need to restart discord to fix it

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

I have been experiencing the same issue and found this other thread: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1405036-keyboard-playpause-key-only-works-when-win-key-also-pressed/

This happens to me exactly: if I press the play/payse button together with the Windows Key, it works.

Unfortunately, the thread doesn't yet have any solutions.