Shawn Oster

Another new Zune client update, another ZuneKeys.  For those that don't know ZuneKeys gives you a few hotkeys to control playing and pausing the Zune software from any application (hence why they're called global hotkeys).  I stole the idea from WinAmp because I'm always needing to pause or skip tracks and it's much easier to do it with a quick Ctrl + Alt + Home rather than opening up the software and finding the pause button.

It's a super-tiny 31k app.  Just unzip and run and it sits in your tray listening for a hotkey.  Uou can play, pause, stop, skip tracks or adjust the volume.  If anyone on the Zune team reads this I'd love to know if there are any official messages I can send to the application for control because right now I'm faking it by sending the same messages those fancy (and bulky) multimedia keyboards send.

Download ZuneKeys

UPDATE: Updating this post to reflect the fact that this version of ZuneKeys also works with Zune 3.0 and on Windows 7.  I’m even 99% sure it’ll work on the updated software coming on September 15th, 2009.