GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 551005
evince takes over global keyboard shortcuts
Last modified: 2008-10-21 21:59:36 UTC
Please describe the problem: Whenever evince is running, it "takes over" my media keys. When I press the "Play/Pause" button on my keyboard, evince goes fullscreen. What should happen is that the audio player (e.g. Rhythmbox) starts or stops playing. Pressing the "Previous" or "Next" keys skips forward or back a page in evince. What should happen is that the audio player plays the next or previous track. The original function of the keys is not returned once evince is closed unless you focus Rhythmbox at some point. Steps to reproduce: 1. Start Rhythmbox. 2. Press "Play/Pause" key. Track starts playing. 3. Open evince and switch focus to another application (e.g. gedit, Firefox). 4. Press "Play/Pause" key. Evince goes fullscreen. 5. Exit evince. 6. Press "Play/Pause" key. Nothing happens. 7. Focus Rhthmbox. 8. Press "Play/Pause" key. Tracks is paused (expected behaviour). 9. Defocus Rhythmbox. Press "Play/Pause" key. Track starts playing (expected behaviour). Actual results: Expected results: Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information: Issue reported in Ubuntu (Launchpad bugtracker): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evince/+bug/263779 Settings in System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts: Play (or Play/Pause): XF86AudioPlay Previous Track: XF86AudioPrev Next Track: XF86AudioNext evince 2.23.6-0ubuntu1 rhythmbox 0.11.6svn20080807-0ubuntu1 gnome-settings-daemon 2.23.91-0ubuntu1 Ubuntu intrepid, fully updated (Wednesday 3-Sept-08)
Confirmed with Banshee+Evince. The fact that RB gets its keys back after refocusing is nice, but irrelevent in my opinion. Banshee has the same hotkey-stealing behaviour but evidently lacks the code to take them back. It should be up to Evince not to steal the keys, not up to other applications to get them back.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 547164 ***
For Banshee, it is possible to take the hotkeys back by disabling and re-enabling the Multimedia Keys extension. But this behaviour is very annoying, considering I open and close many Evince windows while listening to music on Banshee. All of a sudden I can't control Banshee without focusing the Banshee window. Perhaps a configuration option should be added for multimedia key support, perhaps in gconf or something.