Hello all,

I want to set custom keyboard shortcuts for control audio playback like next & previous title (the function keys of my Thinkpad X250 work fine for volume control, but there are no dedicated keys for playback commands) for my XFCE desktop.
By that I mean control audio playback from the desktop (not in terminal) not matter which virtual desktop I am on and the audio program is running in the background. This should work no matter which program I use: Audacious, VLC, Clementine, Rythmbox, Amarok, etc.

In my XFCE settings there is nothing available, although there is the option to configure something, but my Linux knowledge is not sufficient to make some headway here.


So far I haven't found any helpful tutorials on the web (this one for example isn't useful). In Gnome Shell it is possible to assign a custom key combinations for a preset audio command like next / previous title / pause / stop.


I am running on Fedora 33, although the distribution shouldn't matter much.

Many thanks in advance for your tips.

Settings ‣ Keyboard ‣ Application Shortcuts

See application options of Parole music player for how to control it from the command line.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks shruggy for your quick reply.

Thanks, now I have set commands for Audacious audio player, the one I use most often. Looks like there is no program agnostic command. Well, I can live with that

I found solution in using the playerctl package which is also in the Fedora repositories.