Play Button iTunes Patch

Published Sunday November 21, 2010

Overview

This is a patch for removing the default OS X behavior of always starting iTunes when the play button on the keyboard is pressed. This feature can be useful for a lot of users, but it can also be annoying if you are using VLC or other similar programs that support the media keys.

The Patch.command script will patch the Remote Control Daemon to prevent it from starting iTunes whenever you press the play button on the keyboard or an external remote control. This will only prevent iTunes from starting, all other functions (like play/pause while iTunes is running) will continue to work as before.

Lastly, this program will backup the original file in case if you would like to restore the original functionality.

Updates

2011-08-18 farhan: Updated to 0.8 to account for spaces in the directory name (thanks to Michael Winstock for submitting the patch!).

2011-07-26 farhan: If you are upgrading to OS X Lion with a previously patched file then please note that the OS X Lion upgrade process replaces the patched file with an updated version so you will have to re-run this to patch the latest file.

Download

Play Button iTunes Patch 0.8.1

After downloading double click on Patch.command and follow the prompt.

License

Copyright (C) 2010 Farhan Ahmad.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation; version 2 of the License.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Comments

For fixing this awful feature! This is one of the reasons I hate apple..

Thank you for this quick and easy fix.

Thanks for saving me a bunch of work! Works fine here.

And what is the purpose of the remote control function anyway?

This patch only disables the launching of iTunes. Everything else should work as usual.

Based on what I have seen so far I believe remote control daemon (rcd) controls the launching of programs and implements a lot of the other multimedia related functionality when using remote and other multi-media keys on the keyboard. I have seen that without rcd iTunes wouldn't respond to any of the multimedia keys (rewind/forward), but I haven't confirmed that.

thanks

Thanks Dude you rock!

Thank you for fixing the daemon to stop pulling up iTunes! Do you know how to do the same for the rewind and fast forward keys?

For anyone wondering, Lance and I exchanged a few emails and found that the cause in his case was a third party program called TunesArt. Some changes in that program fixed this issue.

Great patch. Thanks man!

This is SO useful. Thanks a lot for that!

Hey,

Every time I try to run the patch I get a empty Terminal window..
Anybody knows what to do?

Thanks!

Jannes and I had a conversation through email. Before we could figure out the actual cause, a restart fixed the issue.

This is something Apple should have done, many thanks for releasing this patch and fixing things for everyone!

Thanks for this one!

Perfect man! That is it, works fine for me =)

I can confirm this patch working with Mac OS X Lion. Thanks a lot mate!

Great, thanks for letting me know!

Indeed, works nicely on OSX Lion. Cheers!

Great, thanks for letting me know!

Exactly what I was looking for!

Great, thank you for this small thing. It works well on LION (10.7.2)! Thanks!!!

I am glad that this is useful. Enjoy!

Installed and tested under Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on an Intel-based iMac. The keyboard's Play/Pause key and the remote control's Play/Pause button do not launch iTunes anymore. Aside from this, the keyboard media keys and remote control buttons work normally. Conclusion is... this smart little patch works flawlessly. It does exactly what it is supposed to do. Kudos to the author of this script. Note: I haven't tried the unpatching process, I like my RCD patched!

Thanks so much!!

I am glad that this worked for you. Enjoy the media keys! :)

hey mate. doesn't work anymore with new lion update. :(

Are you sure? I am running Lion and it has been working fine. Try restarting, backing out the patch by running it again and then re-applying.

why am i always missing the easiest way?! thanks. works fine now!! :D

thank you for this wonderful patch! =)

Such a simple thing should've been the default behavior. Luckily there's you to fix it :)

Yeah, at the least it should have been an option in the OS :) I am glad that you found this useful as well. Enjoy!

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