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Make your Mac's media keys predictable. Hook play/pause, next, previous, and optionally volume to the app you choose instead of whichever player macOS remembers.
Hello! I made a small menubar app that let's you route media keys + volume control to specific app.
Ever press play and some background YouTube tab starts blasting instead of Spotify? Beamhook fixes that: pick one app in the menu bar, and play/pause.
I was very used to BeardedSpice but that doesn't work on latest macOS. MacMediakeyForwarder has a new fork but I think it only controls Spotify or Apple Music.
Built in: Spotify, Apple Music, Apple TV, VLC, QuickTime Player
Browsers too — Safari, Chrome, Brave — hooked to a specific tab rather than the whole browser
Volume sliders for whatever is currently playing, including per-tab sliders for browser sources
Optional: route the volume keys to the hooked app too; ⌘+volume still does system volume
Add your own apps with custom AppleScript (experimental)
Native Swift, menu-bar only, no Electron, macOS 14.0+, Apple Silicon & Intel
Site: https://beamhook.app/ Github: https://github.com/ppixu/beamhook
It's open source (GPL-3.0) — build it yourself for free, or grab the signed & notarized build for €5 (one-time, all 1.x updates included).
Congrats on the launch, Olli! Such a satisfying fix — media keys hooking to the wrong app drives me nuts, so a menubar app that just routes them properly is brilliant. 🚀
This looks genuinely useful, my media keys always end up controlling whatever Spotify was last open even after I close it. One thing that would make it even better is letting us set up different app profiles based on which one is in the foreground, so it could automatically switch to VLC when Final Cut is active without me touching anything.
The media-keys-going-to-the-wrong-app problem is so real — love that you fixed it. Congrats on the launch, Olli! 🚀
this solves a major frustration I've had for a while. Does it also solve the fact that if no media app is open, the play button opens apple music?
About Beamhook menubar on Product Hunt
“Hook mac media keys to a specific app”
Beamhook menubar was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 6 upvotes and 6 comments, placing #94 on the daily leaderboard. Make your Mac's media keys predictable. Hook play/pause, next, previous, and optionally volume to the app you choose instead of whichever player macOS remembers.
Beamhook menubar was featured in Spotify (24.2k followers), GitHub (41.4k followers), Menu Bar Apps (12.2k followers) and Audio (2.1k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 35k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Beamhook menubar?
Beamhook menubar was hunted by Olli Pikkarainen. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
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Olli Pikkarainen