What can I do to stop the Play / Pause button from opening iTunes?
In Snow Leopard the Play / Pause media button (on the F8 key) opens up iTunes. How can I disable that? Preferably keeping the old Leopard behaviour, so I can use it to control other media applications (e.g. Spotify).
Solution 1:
a better temporary fix is to start quicktime and just have it running(not playing a movie) in the background. It uses less ram/cpu than iTunes.
Solution 2:
Update: There is a GUI available that performs the below steps, at the official website.
Fixing this is very simple. While the installation process does involve using Mac Terminal, you do not need any knowledge of it. I have included images to make it easier! Just follow 6 simple instructions below and you are done!
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Download this zip file
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Unzip the file
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Run the Patch.command file (Double Click It)
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It will open mac terminal. It will most likely prompt you to enter your password. Type your password and press enter. It should look similar to the image below:
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At the bottom it will say "Everything is ready. Would you like to create a backup and apply the patch (y/N)". Type y, then press Enter. It should look similar to the image below:
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You are done! It should output some text and say
[Process Complete]at the bottom. You can then close the mac terminal window. The process completing successfully should look similar to the image below:
Uninstall
If you want to remove this patch, simply run the Patch.command script again.
Here is the github repository Thanks to thebitguru for this script.
Solution 3:
The real solution: Open Terminal, paste in the following line, and hit enter. You're done. To undo, change unload to load in the same line.
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist
Solution 4:
For controlling Spotify, use Shift + Option + Play button. iTunes does not react to this combination, but Spotify does.