Bug#930350: marked as done (gnome-shell: Play/pause keyboard button stops controlling Rhythmbox/Totem)

[Simon McVittie]

Mike Crowe wrote:
> It appears that functionality of the play/pause keyboard button returns to
> normal if I close Google Chrome

This probably means Google Chrome uses GNOME's D-Bus APIs to register
itself as a media player, so that the play/pause/etc. keys can control
sites like Youtube and Soundcloud?

The play/pause/etc. keys are intercepted by GNOME and routed to exactly
one media player, to make sure that pressing Play while you have, for
example, both Totem and Rhythmbox open doesn't cause them both to start
playing at the same time (which would usually result in cacophony). I
don't know whether they're sent to the most recently registered media
player, or follow some more elaborate heuristic.

It would perhaps be better if Chrome only registered itself as a media
player while the current tab is a site containing multimedia playback,
so that other browser uses did not interfere with local media player apps.

    smcv