Some keyboard shortcuts dont get passed through to other apps (mpv) anymore

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I am using mpv in a KDE system as a home theater setup. This has worked well for years, but since one of the recent updates (Plasma 6 I guess), certain media keys are not passed through to mpv anymore.

Pause and next still work, but neither play nor stop, nor previous.

I have looked into the exported keyboard shortcuts which contain

[mediacontrol][Global Shortcuts]                                                
mediavolumedown=                                                                
mediavolumeup=                                                                  
nextmedia=Media Next                                                            
pausemedia=Media Pause                                                          
playmedia=                                                                      
playpausemedia=Media Play                                                                                                                                                                     
previousmedia=Media Previous                                                    
stopmedia=Media Stop

Next and Pause still work, Play, Previous and Stop don’t. Is this a bug, or can I change this somehow? My IR remote is next to useless without the ability to stop and resume play.

When I remove all the assigned shortcuts above, I get at least the play function back, but stop and previous are still missing.

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Hi - it looks like keyboard media keys have been a potential challenge for several folks over the years, not even exclusively to Plasma 6: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/sy8uuj/media_controls_randomly_stop_working/ — 418288 – Keyboard multimedia keys are unstable

Just curious, do any of the workarounds mentioned on that Reddit thread help in your case?

  • Check if there are multiple panels, system tray widgets or media player widgets active
  • Chrome/Chromium-based browsers (including Brave, Vivaldi, etc.) stealing the media keys
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What happens if you log in with a freshly created USER?

Customisation can be a double-edged sword… but using Plasma shortcuts I’m usually able to get warnings when trying to reassign shortcuts and find out what’s using them.

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@johnandmegh There has not been a Chrom{e,ium} browser on this PC ever. I am going to double-check for multiple panels etc, but so far, I don’t think there are any.

This was a bare-bones install with just the default Ubuntu programs, mpv and nothing else from the beginning.

@ben2talk The freshly created user is a good idea. I am going to test this, the install is quite old and was upgraded over the years. Maybe there’s cruft.

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