Multimedia Keys not recognized in Cinnamon 20.3

[bolzak]

I've set up a new computer as my media server for kodi and plex. I'm using a Harmony smart hub to control all of my media components. I'm not able to get my remote nor my keyboard to recognize the play, pause, stop, forward, reverse buttons. I've seen posts such as this one: https://www.addictivetips.com/ubuntu-li ... -on-linux/ that offer suggestions, but I thought I would try this forum first. I don't want to try a bunch of different ideas hoping one of them will work.

I'm relatively new to linux after spending nearly 30 years in the windows world, so I would appreciate suggestions that take my lack of experience and knowledge into consideration.

As always, I appreciate the assistance of you who are much more skilled than I.

Bill

[redaxe]

Hello Bill.
Actually the proceedings described in the article you linked to are most likely the easiest way to get it working. Remember that Mint is based on Ubuntu (and Mate is based on a fork of GNOME). Certainly depends on the keyboard, though. But key binding will most likely be the way to go. I don't use Cinnamon though, and Mint MATE only on a secondary Laptop, but on my main machine that runs ZorinOS getting a Dell Multimedia Keyboard to work was no problem (except for two "zoom" keys that are not even recognized as keypresses when I configured it).
Regards
-Hermann-

[bolzak]

Thanks for your feedback and your experience with this problem. I will follow the directions in my attached link and hope for the best.

[bolzak]

I followed the steps and have been able to bind the keys using playerctl. However, the only key(s) that actually respond is the play/pause key. The stop, next track, previous track all seem to bind, but when pressing those keys during audio or video playback nothing happens. I've even tried binding a function key (f12) to the stop key and that hasn't proven effective.

Any thoughts?