Headphone controls aren't interacting with music-app

[Simon K]

In Android and iOS (and others) you have the ability to change music-tracks via a remote attached to the headphones.

In Android/iOS you can switch tracks by holding the middle button of your headset.
A short press will pause/unpause or start the music.

What I think needs to be implemented (feel free to remove this for a blueprint or similar):
1. Music-App:
To make it possible for an extern program to interact with music-apps "now playing" music app has to define a interface though.

2. Background-Service/Mir/Daemon:
I think there needs to be a "higher component" (a daemon or Mir?) which registers those button presses as "Shortcuts" or something simmilar, I don't however know who to tag except music-app.

3. Linux-Kernel:
Mapping the headphone-buttons to a event the implementation of "2." can poll/listen to.
At least for Android-Compatible headphones this is already implemented, If I press my headset-button in the terminal-app I can see a "~" char appearing.

[Victor Thompson (vthompson)]

Thanks! Eventually we'll get someone to look into this--but it won't make it into 13.10. Sorry.

[Andrew Hayzen (ahayzen)]

I guess this would be done in a similar way to media keys on the desktop which work via DBus?

But yeah this should be targeted for after 13.10.

[Andrew Hayzen (ahayzen)]

This may have been fixed with bug 1398427 as the code [0] change mentions media keys, I will check when I next have access to a headset with media-keys.

0 - https://code.launchpad.net/~rsalveti/qtmir/wired_hs_keys/+merge/243720

[Scott Hodgson (lgnux)]

It would be nice to have the bluetooth buttons work as well.

[Andrew Hayzen (ahayzen)]

I think that hardware media keys are now working (eg from a keyboard or USB)? Bluetooth ones are being tracked under bug 1398193.

As this is such an old bug I'm going to mark this as invalid, if this is still an issue please report a bug against media-hub (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/media-hub).

[zubozrout (zubozrout)]

Hmm, the last time I checked regular jack headphones with a button could not interact with music-app but since all the current Ubuntu phones are now dead and mostly not updated I guess it may be fixed in the new music-app and system releases. I have no way to test this though.