Windows 7 shortcut to play/pause Windows Media Player from anywhere?

Question

What is the kind of shortcut or way to to play/pause Windows Media Player from anywhere?

I'm tired of having to search for my Windows Media Player in my taskbar each time a colleague ask me something...

I am using version 12 of Windows Media Player.

There is no shortcut key currently in existence on your system. But you could make one depending on how much time you want to invest in this. — Jasen, Jan 04 '11 at 14:25
@Moab, not GLOBAL shortcuts.. You need to focus WMP to activate shortcuts. — bAN, Jan 04 '11 at 15:33

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 04 '11 at 14:54

You are looking for global shortcuts for the media player you're using, but you don't tell what media player it is. Some media players like Winamp support global shortcuts. You can edit/view those shortcuts from the Options/Preferences menu.

However, Windows Media Player doesn't support global hot keys like Winamp does; but there’s a great solution at SourceForge.net which is WMP Keys.

WMP Keys is global hot keys support addon for Windows Media Player. WMP Keys is easy to use and manage. Download and install it. The next time you open up Windows Media Player, open up the Tools menu, choose Options and the Plugins tab. Find the Backgrounds category and enable the Wmpkeys plugin with a check in its check-box.

At this point, you can choose the Properties button to change any of the hotkeys that are assigned to the Media Player functions.

alt text

thanks a lot!! Exactly what I was searching! What a useful tool! — bAN, Jan 04 '11 at 14:58
yeah this was my idea ha ha. i had to sleep though, thanks Mehper. I just didnt know really how much you were willing to do for a solution. — Jasen, Jan 04 '11 at 19:23

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 04 '11 at 14:46

2

Not certain what you mean by anywhere...however...

CTRL+P will play/pause a file while CTRL+S will stop the file entirely while Media Player 11 is running.

answered Jan 04 '11 at 14:46

Aaron McIver

1,405
9
13

1

It works but focus have to be on the window.. Anywhere means from any application like a WINDOWS+D or WINDOWS+P.. – bAN Jan 04 '11 at 14:51
Shortcuts work on focus. A shortcut moves up a visual tree based on the element which has focus. Without focus a shortcut would have no definitive starting point. – Aaron McIver Jan 04 '11 at 14:53

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 16 '12 at 15:25

If you happen to have a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop, you'll notice that the down arrow key on the keyboard also has a Play/Pause symbol on it. Pressing Fn+DownArrow causes Windows Media Player to play/pause the active music. This works whenever Windows Media Player is running, even when it isn't the foreground application.

(I'm not sure if all models of Thinkpad laptop have this, but the ones I've used do, at least: T60, T500, T520 and T420.)

Windows 7 shortcut to play/pause Windows Media Player from anywhere?

3 Answers3