How to make Rhythmbox toggle between pause and play with spacebar?

Solution 1:

rythymbox's keyboard interface is incoherent.

The desired behaviour, (which imo is desired behaviour for all music players at all times,) of space bar being play/pause button, is actually possible after you click play or pause with the mouse. It is like it 'selects' that button.

However, after you select a track for example, the spacebar behaviour changes to selecting that track, so everytime you press pause, I mean spacebar, it will again select that track, and because it is playing it will start playing the track again. I hope this will get fixed sometime into something more sensible and intuitive. Like the desired behaviour.

Solution 2:

You would need to change the source, as space in a tree typically means "activate the current selection." And this describes the behavior you're seeing exactly.

However, it does appear that pressing Ctrl+Space gives your desired behavior.