STOP ITUNES FROM TAKING MEDIA KEYS HOSTAGE: USE VOX INSTEAD

• Love Vox, the simple iTunes alternative, but find yourself annoyed every time you absent-mindedly hit the “Play” button on your keyboard? Stop iTunes from launching, and use your media keys with a program you don’t hate. Here’s how.
• Vox offers a simple, playlist-driven interface fans of the original WinAMP will love alongside more advanced features like a graphic equalizer.

• This lightweight music player also offers optional iTunes integration, so there’s a quick way to get at the music you have already amassed.

Setting Up Your Media Keys With Vox

• This article assumes you already have Vox installed and up and running. You can read the MakeUseOf review of Vox to find out more, or head over to the official website to download.
• Once installed and running, open up the Vox preferences from the menubar:

• Hit the Control tab and you’ll see this button at the bottom:

• Click Setup and a DMG file will start to download. Open that and you’ll see a Finder window like this:

• Double-click the file to install the preference pane (you may need to bypass Gatekeeper to do so). You can install for one user or all users:

• You’ll now see a new button at the bottom of your Mac’s System Preferences window. Click it and you can control which buttons will now control Vox:

• It’s pretty self-explanatory from here on out: you can use keyboard media buttons, headphone controls as well as the Apple remote to control what’s playing in Vox

Solves A Problem For Many

We’ve already shown you just how hard it can be to stop iTunes from interfering with the Mac media keys, so for this reason alone Vox and this preference pane is worth checking out. If you want to ditch Apple’s default media player, but don’t want to type commands you don’t understand to disable the “Play” button from launching it, this is an easy option. Vox, and its preference pane, make the process simple.