Author Topic: Multiple hotkeys for a single action  (Read 8251 times)

hentrop

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It would be nice to allow for more than one hotkey for an action. For example, I like having the global hotkeys Alt+Shift+Z, Alt+Shift+X, and Alt+Shift+C for Previous Track, Play/Pause, and Play Next Track, respectively, which I can use from anywhere in Windows. However, when I'm in MusicBee, I'd prefer to be able to use simpler hotkeys for those actions. For example, Left Arrow, Spacebar, and Right Arrow for the above 3 actions. But, as is, I can only set one hotkey per action.

getmusicbee_account1111

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I think the same thing was requested over 2 years ago, yet is somehow still not a thing. It's the way it works in literally all music players I've tried. That includes iTunes, Foobar2K, WMP, Zune app and even most video players like PotPlayer, VLC, Splash etc. It's the most intuitive way of doing it, yet when I press Space in MB it does something weird and jumps to a random song for god knows what reason..

Steven

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hentrop

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Why not? There seems to be demand for it, and other music player apps have this functionality. Seems like it would be pretty easy to implement too?

phred

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I don't see how you can say there's demand for this when I count a total of three people in the threads referenced. I don't think Steven would implement something that only a minuscule number of users want.

In addition, it's bad form to tell a developer that something seems pretty easy to implement.

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hentrop

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Sorry, that was taken a lot worse than I thought it would. I didn't mean for that. In other forums I've been on, a handful of requests for a feature were considered enough to be noticed, but I guess that's not the case in this forum. The ease of implementation part was meant more as a question, but I guess I should have worded that differently, or not at all.

phred

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In other forums I've been on, a handful of requests for a feature were considered enough to be noticed, but I guess that's not the case in this forum.
No apology necessary.

Consider that with 22,000 forum members (not all of which are active) there are probably 30-40,000 users. MB is developed and maintained by one person, who does this in his spare time. Not every request can be implemented. I don't speak for Steven, but I'm sure among the things he considers is how many people are requesting a feature and how easy it is to implement.
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getmusicbee_account1111

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One option I can think of is using AutoHotKey to map the space key (or any other key) to the shortcut inside MB using the IfWinActive function. But then you'd need to somehow limit it to only be usable if no text field is in focus (otherwise you won't be able to insert whitespace when typing) and no menu entry/window is open.

yafizij

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Just registered to say I'm disappointed. I've using a simple player all these years, moved to MusicBee a few weeks ago, totally loved it, a lot of features and stuff.
But really? You are telling me that the only way to make the space hotkey a play/pause key is to lose the global play/pausefunction key?
Lots of customization yeah. But sad that you guys can't cover the basics.
Last Edit: April 05, 2019, 03:38:47 AM by yafizij

getmusicbee_account1111

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I think I've found a solution (for the spacebar thingy). Edit -> preferences -> Hotkeys -> set Playback: Play/Pause to Space. I'm feeling pretty stupid now xD
Another useful hotkey (for me): set Playback: Play Now to Enter.

spiralon

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I think the same thing was requested over 2 years ago, yet is somehow still not a thing. It's the way it works in literally all music players I've tried. That includes iTunes, Foobar2K, WMP, Zune app and even most video players like PotPlayer, VLC, Splash etc. It's the most intuitive way of doing it, yet when I press Space in MB it does something weird and jumps to a random song for god knows what reason..

that is not true of winamp, in winamp you can easily add multiple hotkeys per action. it's amazing this app, as robust and customizable as it is, doesn't have this ability. i have to use my global hotkeys even when trying to do simple time skips in-app, as well as the inability to even hit enter on songs to play them, since if i used enter as a hotkey i wouldn't be able to operate any other app.

spiralon

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I think I've found a solution (for the spacebar thingy). Edit -> preferences -> Hotkeys -> set Playback: Play/Pause to Space. I'm feeling pretty stupid now xD
Another useful hotkey (for me): set Playback: Play Now to Enter.

yes good point, i'll have to actually do that. but there's a lot of actions i would like to duplicate.

i'm only bothering to complain (and register) for the simple fact that this app is incredibly powerful, stable, intuitive, etc. and this small issue is somewhat baffling. while i'm wishing for things that will never happen, it would be cool if there was a search filter in the hotkey config, since i had to dedicate an entire night to looking for actions and trying to intuit their natural hotkeys, test, and repeat ad infinitum.

thanks devs! also, i'm a budding developer (mostly just javascript, react, node) so if anyone wants to kind of show me the ropes i would love to develop toward this amazing app.

phred

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it would be cool if there was a search filter in the hotkey config, since i had to dedicate an entire night to looking for actions and trying to intuit their natural hotkeys, test, and repeat ad infinitum.
Do you mean this?
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phred

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Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

----------
The FAQ
The Wiki
Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here