Media Keys Do Not Work For iTunes

The solution worked for me

How to keep media keys fixed to iTunes with macOS High Sierra | 9to5Mac

you're a legend...

On keyboard settings just select "All controls"

Nope. 10.13.4 that's what my preference was already set to. No dice.

Same problem here.

Open System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Keyboard

Uncheck the F7 and F8 options

Your media keys should work as usual

Nailed it! Thank you!

This doesn't work. As soon as you use the keyboard once, the system reverts to this non function again.

Hi! My problem was solved by removing Google Play Music application from Google Chrome. It intersepted media keys pressing somehow.

Reviving this old thing to complain that the issue is now even stranger in the Big Sur Beta. Originally the Media Keys controlled iTunes and were great. They worked every time. Then the issue this thread addresses came up: Media Keys input was just handed off to whichever app was in the foreground at any time. That was silly because the foreground app would already have its on-screen controls (and likely the spacebar) available to it for play/pause. Now in Big Sur, the behavior is even worse. 



If I open Music and play some music, then open Safari -> YouTube, play a video, and hit the Play/Pause key, the video will pause. BUT, if I then bring Music back to the foreground and hit the Play/Pause key again, control REMAINS with the YouTube video. It's so frustrating. 



There have been multiple 3rd party apps which have come and gone dealing with just this one obnoxious behavior. Now, after years of the "most recent foreground" behavior and no word from Apple, it has been updated once again and makes less sense than ever.



I wrote my own app which intercepts those key presses and forces them to Music (more or less a rewrite of a small section of the MadMediaKeyForwarder project here: https://github.com/milgra/macmediakeyforwarder), but I would much prefer just a toggle or some setting in macOS which makes these keys anything close to useful again.



Even just an explanation as to the reasoning or expected behavior of these keys would be great at this point. Ideally they could just be priority-mapped to certain applications or something. 

For me, this iTunes media keys issue started only a few days ago. I thought back and remembered that I had installed Spotify on my Mac. So I've just uninstalled Spotify and my media keys are back for iTunes. Phew! Easy fix for me, I hope this helps. There's clearly a clash with the controls for these two media applications.

Hi, have just unchecked "Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys on external keyboards" & it works again!

In my case it still messes with Safari's music controll for video content for example. Every time I hit Play/Pause on my Magic Keyboard with num pad (wireless) it shows speaker icon next to URL, but it won't control the Music app running in background. Even the checkbox for controlling function keys is unchecked. I'm running Big Sur but it did the same on Catallina as well.

Hi I have this exact issue. In my case the play and skip buttons don’t work for itunes at all however do work for other media. My solution for making it work for itunes has been to open youtube play a video with mymouse and then pause it with the keyboard play/pause button, quit youtube with command + Q, open itunes and play a song, then pause the song withthe keyboard and all three keys will return to normal.
this however is only a temporary fix and can be frustrating without iternet, I am exploring more permanent solutions but so far have had no luck.

Hi, I have the exact same issue with iTunes (Music as Apple call it now). I tried the workaround suggested by @TaniwhRowan but didn't work for me. Anyhow those buttons are working well for YouTube.