• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Jonathan Dingman

Dad, Product Guy, WordPress, SEO, and TailwindCSS.

  • SEO
  • Google
  • Google Sheets
  • WordPress
  • About Jonathan

Jonathan DOT VC » Tech » Change the Default Play Button on a Mac to Support 3rd-Party Apps

Change the Default Play Button on a Mac to Support 3rd-Party Apps

June 25, 2016 by Jonathan Dingman

Apple’s restrictions over defaults are typically a good thing. They help prevent users from accidentally being misled by something malicious or an attack. However, when someone wants to intentionally change the default to something, say, the default music player, Apple’s controls don’t make it very easy to do.

I searched and searched for a way to easily allow the play button on my third-party keyboard (I use the Microsoft 4000 ergonomic keyboard) to control Amazon Prime Music. Or Spotify, but really just any music app that isn’t iTunes.

I finally discovered Magic Keys which did the trick. Well, mostly does the trick. My new bluetooth headphones, which I absolutely love, has a pause/play button on the headphones themselves. That button still launches iTunes every time, which is frustrating. I still wish there were a more natural way to change the default for the play function.

Magic Keys - System PreferencesMagic Keys - Configuration

Anyway. Magic Keys allows for the play button to control third-party apps such as Amazon Prime Music or Spotify.

If you have any suggestions for a better solution, please let me know in the comments!

Related Posts:

  • accordion-mockup
    How Accordion UX Impacts SEO: Pros, Cons, and Best Practices
  • Shawn McDonald Concert
    Shawn McDonald Interview While On Tour
  • In concert with The Afters
    An Interview With The Afters
  • The Better Days Ahead.
    The Better Days Ahead.

Filed Under: Tech Tagged With: Music

Primary Sidebar

Jonathan "Jon" Dingman

Welcome to my little corner of the interwebz!

My name is Jonathan.

Recent Posts

  • [Humor] Giving Excel a September 10th rating.
  • Mastering Alphabetization in Google Sheets: A Step-by-Step Guide
  • 100% Free & Simple Full Site Caching at the Edge with Cloudflare
  • Leveraging Structured Data Schema.org Markup for Paginated eCommerce Category Pages
  • How Accordion UX Impacts SEO: Pros, Cons, and Best Practices
  • How to Create a Dropdown List in Google Sheets
  • Sparklines: The Pocket-Sized Warriors of Google Sheets for Quick Data Insights
  • Google Sheets and Data Analysis: Interpreting Zeroes
  • The Ultimate Guide to Dynamic Drop-Down Lists in Google Sheets
  • Google Sheets Best Practices: Perfecting Data Entry with Advanced Validation Techniques
  • Coloring By Numbers in Google Sheets: Making Zeros Disappear
  • 12 Easy to use Features of Google Analytics
  • Self-hosting WordPress: Looking at WordOps vs SlickStack
  • How I Setup a WordPress Cron Job Using AWS Lambda
  • Using Cloudflare, an Amazon Load Balancer, with Nginx and Fail2Ban
  • How to Automate WordPress Backups to Amazon S3 with a Bash Script
  • How to Track Light/Dark Mode in Google Analytics through Google Tag Manager
  • How to Track Ad Block Usage in Google Analytics through Google Tag Manager
  • How to Setup a VAST/VPAID Waterfall with VideoJS
  • How to Return an Empty Cell When the Value is Zero in Google Sheets

Friends

  • Dre is awesome
  • Rareform – Best Upcycled and Recycles Bags

Powered by DigitalOcean
Copyright © 2025

  • Sitemap
  • Privacy
  • Terms