As of recently, Spotify has become my music streaming service of choice and I have it going pretty much constantly during my workday. The only downside of using Spotify (at least the only one I’ve come across thus far) is that there are no pause/play/next keyboard shortcuts – and no ability to create them. This isn’t so much an issue if you are using a keyboard with these features built in. I am however, using a ergonomic non-Apple keyboard with no audio buttons. So when my phone rings, I’m scrambling to bring the app to the front of my screen and then reaching for my trackpad to hit the pause button within the applicaiton. But no longer. Using the application Keyboard Maestro, I’ve created a macro to assign these actions to keyboard shortcuts. Below is a quick guide for setting this up yourself.

Quick Guide: Assign Spotify Play/Pause Action to a Keyboard Shortcut using Keyboard Maestro

1. Launch the Keyboard Maestro application.
2. Select File > New Macro from the menu.
3. Type a name for your macro in the Name box. I used Spotify Play/Pause.
4. Click the + (plus symbol) to the left of New Trigger and choose Hot Key Trigger from the list.
5. Click in the hot key box and type in the shortcut you want to use. I used ⌃⌥P.
6. Click the New Action button.
7. Under the Categories pane, click Execute.
8. Under the Actions pane, double-click Execute an AppleScript.
9. In the AppleScript window, type: tell application “Spotify” to playpause  
10. And that’s it! Now whenever you tap the shortcut key you specified, Spotify will pause or play.

I also created another Spotify Keyboard Maestro macro to skip to the next song. The actions are the same as above except in the AppleScript window, type the following: tell application “Spotify” to next track

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