Create Universal Keyboard Shortcuts to Control All Media Players

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Do you control your favorite media player using keyboard shortcuts? I do. Since I don’t like taking my hands off the keyboard while working, the first thing I do after installing any new program is customize its hotkeys as per my preference. Coming back to the question, you won’t mind configuring one media players’ hotkeys, but if you are using multiple media players or use more than one computer, then you will surely find MPH (Media Player Hotkeys) a useful app.

MPH is a tiny, portable application that allows you to create and control various media players with common hotkeys. It supports all well known players such as VLC, Winamp, Foobar2000, Windows Media Player, Billy and many, many others (scroll down to see the full list). And as it’s portable, you can simply drop the app into your dropbox folder or on a USB flash drive and use the same shortcuts to control players on other computers.

How to Create Hotkeys on MPH
Download (link at the end of post), extract ZIP file, and run the program. You should see a window like below with four tabs:

Media Player Hotkeys
Media Player Hotkeys

To create a hotkey, choose an action (Play, Pause, Mute, etc.) from the dropdown menu and click on “Add hotkey” button. Select any keyboard combination and click on “Accept” to save changes. That’s it; this shortcut key will now work with all media players. Similarly, you can assign hotkeys for other actions. All set hotkeys are listed under “Hotkeys” section in the main tab. If you want to change the keyboard combination of any action, select it and click on “Edit hotkey”. And, to delete a hotkey, select the particular action and click on the “Delete hotkey” button.

The second tab – Players – lists all supported players. Some players don’t support specific actions. For instance, the mute action does not work with Winamp. To know if any limitations are applicable for your player, click on it to see the note.

Media Player Hotkeys Supported Players
Media Player Hotkeys supported players

The Options tab allows you to configure the app to start with Windows, start minimized, minimize to tray, and close to tray.

Lastly, the Help tab gives you some general tips.

Supported players:
1×1, AIMP, AIMP3, ALPlayer, ALSong, Billy, CoolPlayer, Foobar2000 WA, Foobar2000, KMPlayer, Light Alloy, Media Player Classic, PotPlayer, Quintessential Media Player, Screamer Radio, STP, Spider Player, Trout, VLC, Winamp, and Windows Media Player.

Available Actions:
Play, Pause, PlayPause, Stop, Next, Previous, Volume Up, Volume Down, Volume Mute and Show Popup Menu.

MPH is a handy application for users working with multiple media players or multiple computers. It saves them from the trouble of remembering new hotkeys and configuring players every time you do a fresh install.

Download: MPH [746 KB]