Control audio or video playback with your keyboard

Waterfox lets you play, pause and skip media without clicking the video or audio element itself. You can use the media keys on your keyboard or headset, your platform’s on-screen media controls, or an app that sends media commands.

This relies on the site using the MediaSession API, so behavior varies between sites.

Turn the feature on or off

Click the menu button, then select Settings.
Select Accessibility.
Under Keyboard navigation and scrolling, check or clear Control media via keyboard, headset or virtual interface.

Supported platforms

macOS 10.12.1 and later
Windows 8.1 and later
Linux, on GTK-based desktops

How the controls reach Waterfox

Physical media keys on a keyboard or headset.
Your platform’s virtual media controls, which use a different framework on each system: SMTC on Windows, MPRIS on Linux, and MediaPlayer on macOS.
Any app that uses the platform API for media control.

What can be controlled

Audio playing from <audio> and <video> elements, including when the media is fullscreen or in Picture-in-Picture.

These cannot be controlled:

Media from the Web Audio and Web Speech APIs.
Silent media, such as videos with no audio track used in place of animated images.
Notification sounds.

If several tabs are playing at once

The most recently started tab takes the controls. The exception is Picture-in-Picture: while a video is popped out, its tab keeps the controls regardless of what else starts playing.

Why do my media keys control another app instead?

Each platform decides which application owns the media keys, and more than one app may compete for them. If Waterfox is not responding to the keys, close other media applications that may have claimed them.

Adapted for Waterfox from the original Firefox article Control audio or video playback with your keyboard. Original content by Mozilla Contributors. Licensed under the CC BY-SA 3.0.