Global Hotkeys being hijacked by other programs (Media Keys on Keyboard)

[Lordmau5]

Hey guys,

so, I already ran into this issue yesterday...

I was having MusicBee open and was listening to some... well... music! Who would've thought!
Next up, I started GTA V because I wanted to play a bit of Online with a few friends.
After a while of playing, there was a track I wanted to skip... but I couldn't.

What was the (partial) solution?
Either open the Steam Overlay and use the media key skip button, or just alt-tab out of the game for a moment.

Somehow, GTA V manages to hijack the media keys if the game is focused - for whatever god damn stupid reason.

The only fix I have found so far is, that when GTA V is running, I can restart MusicBee so it hooks into the Media Keys system properly again.


Now, my question:
Is there any way, perhaps through a plugin or whatever, to consistently keep MusicBee on the highest priority of the Media Key usage?
As in, once a program is trying to hook into it, hook over it again so MusicBee is "dominant"?

This is really annoying, but I understand if it's not possible...

~ Greets.

[phred]

Since this is not a bug with MB, I'm moving this thread to the General section. 

My only suggestion would be to take the issue to the GTA folks.

[Lordmau5]

You want me to talk to Rockstar Games or open a topic over on their Social Club forums thingy?

I don't think I'll have a slight bit of a chance there, going by the fact that they are total ... *cough* ...
You guys are pretty much my only hope. Either the devs directly or someone that is capable of writing such a plugin that keeps on having priority on the media keys :/

[phred]

You want me to talk to Rockstar Games or open a topic over on their Social Club forums thingy?

I don't think I'll have a slight bit of a chance there, going by the fact that they are total ... *cough* ...

Nor do I, but it's certainly not a problem with MB.

You guys are pretty much my only hope. Either the devs directly or someone that is capable of writing such a plugin that keeps on having priority on the media keys :/

Understood.  There is only one developer of MB (Steven) and he works on MusicBee in his spare time for no monetary reward, other than those folks who care to reward him with donations.  And these days, all that spare time is being devoted to creating v3 of MB.  I don't speak for him, but the likelihood of him making changes based on the request of one user who is experiencing a problem caused by another program is not that great.  You're best hope would be a plugin if you can find someone who is willing to do it.

[Steven]

you could try assigning a global hotkey for each of the player functions instead of using media keys

[Lordmau5]

I've tried exactly that. It works as expected in that case.

Things that work:
- Normal keys, like "Ctrl + G" or "Ctrl + 6"
- "Special" media keys, like "Ctrl + MediaPlayPause" or "Ctrl + MediaNextTrack"

So apparently GTA V is really just hijacking the normal keys... no matter if I set the hotkeys in MusicBee to global or not.