Portable MediaKeys

Made as the portable counterpart of MediaKeys, this is a straightforward software application that permits you to seamlessly control media playback by triggering keyboard shortcuts available at a global level.
It comes in handy to owners of wireless keyboards who want to enjoy a movie, for example. The app offers support for a few popular media players, including Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp, foobar2000 and MediaMonkey.

No setup necessary

Since it's wrapped in a portable package, you can drop the executable file anywhere on the disk or on a removable flash drive and run MediaKeys on any computer with minimum effort. Unlike the installer version, it doesn't create any shortcuts and keeps all its configuration files in its directory.

Systray accessibility

Once launched, the program creates an icon in the taskbar notifications area, thus providing you with quick access to its configuration panel. Otherwise, it sits there without showing any notifications, so it doesn't distract you from your regular PC activities.

Hotkeys for basic media controls and advanced settings

The main panel is very small and contains three dialog boxes for assigning hotkeys for playing/pausing a movie, as well as for skipping forward and backward.
Additional options are available. By default, the keys are applicable to all media players supported by MediaKeys which we previously described. However, you can restrict its area of influence to a specific tool, in order to prevent two or more currently running media players from executing the same command.
Furthermore, it's possible to activate and define hotkeys for launching the hooked media player and switching to its active window, as well as for increasing and decreasing the system volume, or bringing up MediaKeys' configuration panel. You can also select the software update method and ask the utility to run at every Windows startup until further notice.

Evaluation and conclusion

It worked smoothly throughout our evaluation, without triggering the OS to freeze, crash or prompt error dialogs. Unsurprisingly, it left a small footprint on system resources, using low CPU and RAM.
All in all, MediaKeys facilitates a simple method for taking control over basic media player commands. Too bad that it doesn't offer support for additional media players or playback controls. Nevertheless, you can test it for yourself, since it's free.