Video Playback Keyboard Media Controls While Unfocused

[Lessaj 467]

Hi,

I searched this forum but I didn't find a similar topic, so apologies if it has been answered before. My friend mentioned to me that they are often watching videos in the browser because the media controls on their keyboard don't work when the player is not in focus for the Windows app, so if they're watching something while playing a game (especially exclusive full screen) it's much harder to control playback. I have the same keyboard and have tested and produced and similar results - the media controls are working when the app is in focus while playing a video, but they seem to work from anywhere when playing music. I also tested in the new Linux client (public beta soon, don't worry guys!) and the media controls are working for both videos and music even when the app isn't in focus.

Are there any settings related to this that can be toggled? Is it a bug or is there a limitation with this with the Windows app?

App version 2.234.2.0

[Neminem 1518]

@Lessajare those the physical dedicated media control buttons on the keyboard.

like next, previous, play/pause and stop ?

If they are, I sadly see the same thing in 2.234.2.0

But the good news is that using Beta 2.273.2.0 they work.

I think the linux and windows beta client have somewhat the same code base.

[Lessaj 467]

Yes they are dedicated buttons for stop, previous, play/pause, and next. Thanks for letting me know that you're seeing it working on the 2.273.2.0 beta, I don't have access to the beta right now. The linux client is currently 2.277.0, and yes I do believe they share a lot of underlying code.

Looking forward to an update going out for the Windows app, since it's been almost a year.

Edited December 11, 2025 by Lessaj

[softworkz 5066]

This is quite a (unnecessarily) complex subject. When you take a closer look at a remote like the Windows Media Center models (plus all derived, similar, oem, and even very different models), then we can see that this isn't just like single input device. In fact these are composite devices which means like multiple devices combined in a single one.

In case of those remotes, they have 3 HID  devices (human input) and even more when you calso count the IR reveiver and transmitter featutes.

One of those is a specialized keyboard input device. It is responsible for up-down-right-left movement of the input cursor and numeric key input. This one is bound to the app which is currently  focused - that one will 

The next one is a media control device, which covers features llike start/stop, play, skip prev/next, ffwd, mute, volume-up/down - etc.
Those buttons can have diffferent functionality,  depending on wheher it'sconsidered to be local to you app   when you don't handle them, the OS may do so (or not). This can be confusing sometimes.

The third group is for everything else (guide, red, green,blue, etc..)

With a browser-engine involved, which is also doing some button handling and the OS doing handling as well, things can become quite complicated  and button presses may be handled from multiple sides. That's why one part has been disabled in the current stable and now re-enabled for Linux (A) and also for retesting the situation on Windows again (B).

[Lessaj 467]

Thank you for the highly detailed explanation! Yes in this case referring to media control device - glad to hear the functionality may be coming to a Windows platform near you soon tm based on retesting.

I'm also curious how the media control device inputs are handled when there are multiple applications that receive it, like playing media in Chrome at the same time. Do both get it? Is it the last one to the party gets it? For context when I stream I have Emby playing music on the stream and so I can hear it, Chrome is set to output to my monitor which I can't hear and is a separate music track for the VOD playing something royalty free in a playlist. It doesn't necessarily need to receive any of those track commands, it's just to have something in the background on the VOD, but what I'm actually listening to and broadcasting I may want to control. If it's as simple as making sure Emby is the last application I launch, or the last one to start playing music, I can do that.