Macos – How to remap a play-button keypress from a Bluetooth headset on OS X

bluetoothmacosremappingwireless-headset

I have an LG Tone (HBS 700) Bluetooth stereo headset, and am using it with OS X Lion.

The headset has a play/pause toggle button, but unlike my keyboard's play button, which will toggle play/pause for, say, VLC media player if it is running, the headset's play button will launch iTunes if it is not already open, or toggle play/pause in iTunes if it is already open. It will not toggle play/pause in any other media player.

Can someone explain what system event is likely being triggered when I press play? It's clear that some system daemon is listening for something, since iTunes gets launched and can interpret the play/pause/next/prev controls just fine… Is there a way I can intercept the keypress event and remap its function? I would like it to have the same behavior as the keyboard's play button.

Thanks for your help!

Best Answer

You are looking for the Remote Control Daemon located in:

/System/Library/CoreServices/rcd.app

It can be disabled with the command

sudo chmod a-x /System/Library/CoreServices/rcd.app/Contents/MacOS/rcd
killall -9 rcd

(If you just kill it, launchd will restart it again). To re-enable it,

sudo chmod a+x /System/Library/CoreServices/rcd.app/Contents/MacOS/rcd

Then log out and back in to make launchd start it.

If you are ambitions enough, you may try editing it with a hex editor. This is outside of my realm of knowledge, but I do have two suggestions.

Opening up quicktime (just blank, nothing in it) in the background may prevent the daemon from using iTunes. It depends on whether your device uses the same system event.
Alternatively, there is a free utility located at the following link which patches the daemon for you. After running it, the daemon will use the active program, instead of iTunes. However, this will not remap VLC as the program to be opened when you press play. It is designed for the keyboard media keys, but I believe the OS sees your LG Tone's button as the same system event. That link: http://lifehacker.com/5651055/free-your-macs-media-keys-from-itunes-no-manual-hacking-required

Finally, I can tell you that Apple has not yet provided a simple way to change remote control settings. This is unfortunate, as this is a common question regarding the media keys on keyboards and other controls on devices such as yours. Rather than provide a solution, it seems that they have made changes to the OS in the past to ensure iTunes is the program used by this daemon. Unfortunately, there is unlikely to be a better fix than these soon.

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Windows – No audio in Bluetooth headset

I have Windows 7 laptops and two Sony Bluetooth audio devices: MRD-NWBT10 and SBH50. I have managed to make both work automatically such that when the Bluetooth device is OFF the audio comes from the laptop speakers, and when the Bluetooth device in ON the sound comes from the Bluetooth device (so far).

Two things I had to play with:

Turn your computer Bluetooth adapter ON, make your computer discoverable, and then turn your Bluetooth device on and put it in discoverable mode
Set up a paring
Right-click on the Bluetooth icon and select Show all Bluetooth devices
Right-click on your Bluetooth device and select CONTROL
When the dialogue box opens (and it might disappear quickly!) select CONNECT. For some reason this selection MUST be made by you. Windows 7 does not do it automatically
Windows 7 will then establish an "actual connection" to the Bluetooth device.

Right click on the speaker icon on bottom right of desktop
Select PLAYBACK DEVICES
If the Bluetooth is DISCONNECTED you have to back and do #1. Make sure that #1 works! Remove your device and re-pair it if you have to.
Make the Bluetooth device the default device. Afterwards I found that when the Bluetooth device is ON it becomes the default, and when it is turned OFF the default returns to the laptop speakers. Play with it.

I have no idea why I did not find this information anywhere else on the web. Number one (#1) 1 would have saved me a lot of poking and searching. But I am pleased now. And if the information does not work for you then at least you have more info as to what does NOT work.

AND if I had not been able to post here as a guest I would not have posted.

Linux – Bluetooth headset fails to connect on Linux

After some investigation, seems like pulseaudio-module-bluetooth is missing. These are the steps to install it:

$ sudo apt install -y pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
$ sudo pactl load-module module-bluetooth-discover
$ sudo service bluetooth restart

This should be enough. No need for a reboot.

EDIT 1:

Not all headsets allow simultaneous hi-fi output sink and input source, i.e.: there are different profiles (a2sp, hsp, hfp) which may or may not be supported simultaneously. The "problem" is that a single Bluetooth channel has not sufficient band for both communications to occour simultaneously. Only "dual channel" headsets support different profiles simultaneously.

I cannot tell for sure, but my Philips SHB9850NC was not able to play well with HSP profile: the microphone was simply not working. I was not able to figure out what the reason was. I've tried to switch profiles and I've tried lots of things for a fair amount of time. I cannot claim that "it does not work": maybe it was just my plain incompetence to make it work on Linux... but it shouldn't be rocket science, right?

I've ended up buying another headset (a dual channel) which comes with a pre-paired USB dongue which supports multiple profiles simultaneously.

If you are looking for a headset for videoconferencing over WebRTC for example, you'd better try brands/models targetting this specific market, advertising very clearly this specific usage on call centers or other business applications.

EDIT 2:

Thanks @Hannu for pointing out a script which helps select device profiles:

https://gist.github.com/pylover/d68be364adac5f946887b85e6ed6e7ae

EDIT 3:

Enabling the equalizer: https://gist.github.com/frgomes/5ff8fd34e25d5297517f86ce77ba7fca

Best Answer

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