MediaMonkey (MM) is my music player of choice on Windows. I have a few global hotkeys setup (for instance WIN+ALT+B for next track), but after an upgrade a few months ago (probably starting with 3.0) I noticed that my shortcuts started sending the shortcut keys to the active applications. So, for instance, while in Outlook if I press WIN+ALT+B, MM will go to the next track, but in addition Outlook will switch views because ALT+B is a shortcut in Outlook.

After a quick post online I found the solution that I was looking for. Basically, I had to edit the MediaMonkey.ini and add “PreferLLKeysHook=1” to the “[options]” section. MediaMonkey.ini will be located in different places based on the operating system, you can find the details in this knowledge base article. Add “PreferLLKeysHook=1” to the “[options]” section in there and restart MM. From there on the shortcut keys will only be interpreted by MM and will not be forwarded to the active application.