How to use media buttons for mplayer?

Question

How can I use my laptop's media buttons [Play/Pause, Next, Previous] to work with Mplayer? The XF86 buttons I think they're called.

Mohammad Hedayati · Answer 1 · 2012-07-05 17:41:41Z

up vote 2 down vote

Create a named pipe like this:

mkfifo ~/.mplayer/pipe

Then, put the following line in ~/.mplayer/config:

input=file=/home/<username>/.mplayer/pipe

or you can run mplayer with input argument:

mplayer -input file=/home/<username>/.mplayer/pipe

Now use System Setting->Keyboard->Shortcut and add a shortcut with the command parameter as (see mplayer -input cmdlist for the command list):

echo "<mplayer command>" > /home/<username>/.mplayer/pipe

e.g. echo "pt_step 1" > /home/<username>/.mplayer/pipe for next track.

and then assign a key to this shortcut.

edited Jul 5 '12 at 17:41

answered Jul 5 '12 at 17:34

Mohammad Hedayati
15319

	Sounds interesting, but what happens when I'm not using MPlayer? Will my media buttons still work as normal? Or will these keyboard shortcuts override the normal functions of them. – Matt Aug 26 '12 at 16:39
	Nope! They would still `echo` commands to the pipe which will go wasted! – Mohammad Hedayati Aug 29 '12 at 23:08
	Hmm.. ok, I finally got around to trying this, and it doesn't seem to work. Nothing I echo into the pipe does anything. I have tried both .config, and with the arg pointing to the pipe, but still no luck. version is MPlayer svn r34540. I just tried lsof and it lists .mplayer/pipe is open by mplayer. – Matt Sep 12 '12 at 21:36

1 Answer