I'm not able to make the multimedia-, volume- and brightness-keys to work in the i3 wm on my Macbook Air from 2015.
I have inserted the code which is supposed to enable the buttons however it doesn't work. Reloaded the config settings and tried restarting the computer. The following is the code I use:
Pulse Audio controls
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +2%; exec pactl set-sink-mute @DEFAULT_SINK@ 0
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -2%; exec pactl set-sink-mute @DEFAULT_SINK@ 0
bindsym XF86AudioMute exec pactl set-sink-mute @DEFAULT_SINK@ toggle
Media player controls
bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec playerctl play-pause
bindsym XF86AudioNext exec playerctl next
bindsym XF86AudioPrev exec playerctl previous
Sreen brightness controls
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec xbacklight -inc 20 # increase screen brightness
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec xbacklight -dec 20 # decrease screen brightness
which I found on this question
Is it possible that the multimedia keys have a different name on certain Macbooks?
I have also tried this
Perhaps there is a significant place I have to place the code?
Edit 1
I can see the command line reacting when I press the buttons
Edit 2
When executing the xbacklight command in the prompt I get the following output:
% xbacklight -inc 20
No outputs have backlight property
Edit 3
I've now solved for the volume keys with the following rows
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec amixer -D pulse sset Master 5%+
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec amixer -D pulse sset Master 5%-
bindsym XF86AudioMute exec amixer -D pulse set Master 1+ toggle
Edit 4
Found great info here: https://faq.i3wm.org/question/3747/enabling-multimedia-keys.1.html
Best Answer
This is an old question, but an answer may help out others. I ran into an issue upon a fresh installation of
i3wm
on my laptop where, for whatever reason, myXF86MonBrightnessUp/Down
keys weren't being registered (I checked withxev
). What I ended up doing is creatingacpi
actions and events which corresponded to the keys being pressed.The following are the actions/events I defined in
/etc/acpi/actions
and/etc/acpi/events
, respectively:Actions
/etc/acpi/actions/bl-down.sh
/etc/acpi/actions/bl-up.sh
Events
/etc/acpi/events/bl-down
/etc/acpi/events/bl-up
You can verify your brightnessup/down acpi event codes by using
acpi_listen
in your terminal and then pressing the relevant key combination (e.g., for me, it's Fn + Down Arrow for brightness down).Finally, don't forget to restart
acpid
withsudo /etc/init.d/acpid reload
Note: Your backlight device may be defined in a different location than
/sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0
- that's just where mine happened to be. Do some poking around.