I love clever, low-or-no-code engineering solutions like this. You typically need to understand a systems very deeply to reach this level of elegance. In this case, one has to understand exactly what happens when the play button is pressed in Mac OS, how bundle identifiers work, etc. And the outcome is an app with almost no code at all – just a collision – it's beautiful.

(As an aside, coding agents are terrible at this kind of thing; I'd guess Codex as of right now would write some overpowered application that polls in a loop looking for Music App starts and killing them)

I searched for some decent mp3 players for a while, and even used AIMP for a while, but nowadays I think I'll just vibe code my own with my own interface and rely on the local file system and folder mounts to do the job. I really love this new era where I can just use AI to build a custom thing for myself and forget about all the predatory crap out there, especially from the OS vendors. I don't need streaming, I don't want it. I would have kept buying albums off iTunes, but since it sucks so much I'll just buy it on CD, thanks.

This is problematic because if I were to accidentally hit the button in the middle of a set, and it decides to default to whatever interface is connected to the P.A. system, then now I've just started blasting some random song at full volume to everyone in the venue.

(It's not an immediate problem for me anymore because I've reworked my hardware setup such that the dongle connects through my audio interface rather than directly to my laptop, meaning my laptop no longer receives "play/pause" commands from it. There were additional reasons for this rework, but preventing this misbehavior was absolutely part of the consideration.)

It's absurd that a premium device marketed to creative professionals has unconfigurable behavior like this which is so unacceptable for a live show.

F3/F4 are remapped to the keyboard backlight brightness.

F5-F9 are remapped to be plain old function keys.

This post has a lot of great info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555475

This is the mapping I use on an M1 MacBook:

    hidutil property --set '{
      "UserKeyMapping":[
        {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x0000FF0100000010,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x00FF00000009},
        {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x0000000c00000221,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x00FF00000008},
        {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x0000000c000000cf,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x00070000003e},
        {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x000000010000009b,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x00070000003f},
        {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x0000000c000000b4,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x000700000040},
        {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x0000000c000000cd,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x000700000041},
        {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x0000000c000000b3,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x000700000042}
      ]
     }'

Source code for this one: https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/MusicDecoy

https://github.com/quentinlesceller/macmediakeyforwarder

So annoying and not great UX from Apple imo. Thanks for this.

> BeardedSpice is a menubar application for Mac OSX that allows you to control web based media players and some native apps with the media keys found on Mac keyboards. It is an extensible application that works with Chrome (Canary, Yandex, Chromium) and Safari, and can control any tab with an applicable media player.

[0]: https://beardedspice.github.io

    launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist

You'll have to remember to re-load this thing if you want the default behavior. Or if you encounter other unexpected situations, to restore the default insanity.

It might be easier to run this app instead; then you have an icon in your GUI desktop environment and an app you can simply quit to restore defaults. Plus this app allows you to assign any app to the "Play" media event.

- Media Playback Known Issues: In apps like TV, Podcasts, and Music, the window controls may become unresponsive after dragging the playhead to adjust the playback position. (177984877)

- Workaround: Use keyboard shortcuts or the menu bar to close, minimize, or enter full screen mode.

• • •

Super clunky compared to the imminently more practical workaround for wrong-size gifs in Messages, STOP LOOKING AT IT:

- Messages Known Issues: GIFs and pasted images might render as the incorrect size. (177657977)

- Workaround: Scroll until that message is offscreen

  curl https://alx.sh | sh

I actually nuked my music library off my Mac to mitigate this problem, but it's still a nuisance when the app launches.

Thank you for sharing this!

I have the podcast app and so many times I would click an AirPod to resume and it would play a random song

Many times Apple Music also triggered by the Bluetooth devices which is super annoying.

Apple really needs to implement a way to remove Apple Music completely.

Slightly concerned Apple would patch this by preventing others from using the same bundle identifier as their official apps, though?

  sudo chmod -x /Applications/Music.app

this is the OG app.

Then launch it once to say you approve

startup Ventura and later: Navigate to System Settings Select General Select Login Items Click the + under Open at Login and select noTunes

https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes

/s for the sarcasm impaired

Another fix for this bollocks