Pandora One Media Keys – Enable them!

June 27, 2010 by
 

I really enjoy Pandora – and I recently bought the upgrade to Pandora One, since I listen to it at work most of the day.  Aside from the player being AIR-based, my only gripe is the lack of media key support.  I’ve put together a simple application that runs in the background, redirecting media key input to the Pandora One player.

  • .NET 2.0 – Windows 2000 to Windows 7
  • Only the Next and PlayPause keys are mapped.  The attached source code includes Like and Dislike as well.
  • if the player is minimized, it will be restored, so you’ll want to keep the player behind your other windows.
  • The player needs to be in the now playing state, if you’re at the list of stations, the keys won’t work.
  • If you’d like to run the program at startup, create a shortcut and place it in your Startup folder, on the start menu.

Download Pandora One Media Keys.  This is a tiny project, so I’m sharing the relevant parts of the source code if you’d like to do something other than map the Next and PlayPause keys.

If this app is useful to you, please donate. :)

Comments

10 Comments on Pandora One Media Keys – Enable them!

  1. Adam on Tue, 21st Sep 2010 11:42 PM

    2. Woot! I’m so glad I finally found a solution to this!

    Great little program, works perfectly without any work at all, worked instantly. I’ve no idea why Pandora wont add this themselves.

    Thanks!

  2. chris reedy on Wed, 3rd Nov 2010 1:54 PM

    3. Dave – I want to use keys from the numeric keypad, numlock off, to control play/pause and skip forward on the desktop player. I like that my media keys already control Windows media player.

    I am researching trying to learn the code to modify what you created, but no luck yet.

    Does it sound like an easy re-write to do that? I wanna use the 2 and 3 number keypad keys, with numlock off.

    thanks! cool app!

  3. Dave on Wed, 3rd Nov 2010 4:34 PM

    4. @Chris -

    You’ll want to combine any Keyboard hook library, and when the key of your choosing is pressed, call the method on PandoraController (ex. PandoraController.Next()).

    This is simple to do, no changes would be needed for my class, you just need to utilize it. Let me know if you have further questions. :)

  4. Ruiz on Mon, 21st Mar 2011 1:20 AM

    5. Thank you so much for this application. My life is just a little bit easier now.

  5. Alex on Fri, 14th Oct 2011 4:52 PM

    6. Hey, just wanted to say thanks for this app. Easy way to add the feature that every media player should come with.

  6. Rich on Sat, 10th Dec 2011 6:05 AM

    7. Thanks so much!!! I have been looking for something like this since the desktop app came out!

  7. Michael on Tue, 17th Jan 2012 12:56 AM

    8. This is absolutely amazing. Thanks for posting it.

  8. Jim J on Fri, 13th Apr 2012 10:21 AM

    9. Awesome work! Very handy and lightweight. Thank you for sharing the code. This is great!

  9. Pez on Sat, 28th Apr 2012 10:10 AM

    10. Thank you! Made my day.

  10. Combining TriteHotKeys and PandoraOneMediaKeys on Wed, 27th Feb 2013 6:59 PM

    11. [...] http://www.daveamenta.com/2010-06/pandora-one-media-keys-enable-them/ [...]