Ctrl iTunes

I wanted to control iTunes using the keyboard even when iTunes isn’t the front program. I tend to leave my entire music collection (11.03 GB, 7 days and getting larger) to play on random so I end up going through a lot of songs. I usually have iTunes playing music in the background as I work or play using other programs. I usually command-tab over to iTunes and use the arrow keys, but I would rather not leave the application I am working in.

I wanted to assign the backward, play/pause, and forward buttons to my F13, F14 and F15 keys, since they are in a nice group of three separate from the other function keys, but it turns out that F14 and F15 are used to darken and brighten my screen. So I decided to assign them to F10, F11 and F12 which are above the delete key on the upper right of the main keyboard. Its not too bad since F12, which is the easiest to reach by feel, is the one I will hit most often.

I had to write these simple applescripts:

tell application "iTunes"
	back track
end tell

tell application "iTunes"
	playpause
end tell

tell application "iTunes"
	next track
end tell

Toughest scripting I’ve ever done.

I also had to assign these scripts to the function keys. This is something I thought was part of the system, but you need additional software, at least in OSX. Scripts can easily be assigned to function keys in OS9, but I rarely use 9 at home. There are two software options:

• QuickKeys
• iKey(formerly Youpi Key)

QuickKeys is a commercial product ($100 too). iKey used to be free and now it is shareware, but it seems to perform fine without registration and there are no nag screens. If you can’t guess I downloaded iKey. It is a fairly nice clean program. I simply assigned the scripts to the function keys and it works as advertised. I got this info from this macosxhints article.