**Many thanks go out to mbebop and his tip for getting the Media Keys working in Snow Leopard**
Laptop media keys are excellent for quickly controlling iTunes and other media software. The Inspiron 1525 media keys worked on Leopard after installing both a kext and Butler, an application capable of converting your key presses into iTunes commands. The media keys are once again working, only now they function in Snow Leopard. Plus, the process only requires the installation of one application.
The application, GimmeSomeTune, is free and can be downloaded from the developers site. Simply install the app and then launch it. We now need to make two changes to the application’s settings before it’ll function how we want it to.
First, we need to program the actual hotkeys. Click on the Hotkeys tab and then the Player Hotkeys tab below. Set the appropriate Hotkeys for Play/Pause, Next Track, and Previous Track; you can ignore the other hotkeys such as Volume Up/Down as the volume media keys already control the system volume. Note that you can program the other hotkeys if you’d like, though doing so is not required.
Next, click on the General tab and check the “Start GimmeSomeTune with iTunes” option. This will do just as the name implies, allowing for hotkey control whenever iTunes is running. As an added bonus, GimmeSomeTune will also automatically quit when you quit iTunes.
And there you have it! You can now control iTunes from the media keys no matter what the active window is. While you’re customizing OS X, you might also want to check out HyperDock.
January 26th, 2011 at 9:32 PM
The new ApplePS2Controller.kext, and ApplePS2Keyboard.kext seem to disable my F12 eject key. I rather like my eject key and I cannot seem to reassign it. Although the media keys work great.
January 26th, 2011 at 6:49 PM
You can most likely get the F12-eject shortcut back with key mapping software, though there’s a much simpler workaround. Navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/ and double click Eject.menu. You’ll now have the eject icon in your menubar and can easily eject the disc tray.
October 22nd, 2010 at 4:27 PM
Awesome!!!