Keyboard shortcuts

There are two kinds. The ones below are fixed and work while Fadenza’s window is in front. The eight transport shortcuts further down are yours to assign, and each one can be made to work while another application is in front.

In the window

Space is play/pause except while you are renaming a playlist, where it types a space. The rename field commits when it loses focus, so it stays pending — and Space stays a space — until you press Return or click away.

⌘ ← follows the same rule as the Previous button: more than three seconds into a track it seeks back to the start, otherwise it moves to the previous track.

Your own shortcuts

Eight transport actions take a shortcut you choose, in Settings → Shortcuts:

These are in addition to the table above. Assigning your own Next does not take ⌘ → away.

To set one, click its field and press the combination. Esc cancels, ⌫ clears it back to unassigned.

Global

Each shortcut has a Global checkbox. Ticked, it works while any application is in front — skip a track without leaving what you are doing. Unticked, it works only while Fadenza’s window is in front.

Global costs you nothing to grant. Fadenza asks the system to deliver those combinations and nothing else, so there is no Accessibility permission to approve, no prompt, and no mechanism here that can see anything else you type. It is the same reason the media keys need no setup.

The three shipped defaults are global out of the box. The five unassigned actions have Global available as soon as you give them a combination.

The rules, and what they cost you

A shortcut must include Control or Option. Press one without and the field says so and keeps waiting. This is what keeps you from binding over ⌘ Q or ⌘ → — every shortcut macOS and Fadenza already use is ⌘-based, so the rule excludes the whole class rather than relying on a list of exceptions somebody has to remember to extend. What it costs is that ⌘⇧ combinations cannot be bound at all.

Giving one action a combination another action already has moves it. The previous owner becomes unassigned rather than the new assignment being refused, so swapping two of them is two presses instead of four.

A combination another application holds is refused, and the row says In use by another app. Whoever registers first keeps it — nothing here takes a shortcut away from another app, and nothing can take yours away either. Quit the other application and reopen Settings → Shortcuts: it re-registers as the tab appears, so there is nothing to press.

Shortcut labels follow your keyboard layout. Fadenza stores the key itself rather than the character printed on it, and asks your current layout what to call it — the key that types ] on a US layout types + on a German one, and the row reads ⌃ ⌥ + there.

Your shortcuts are a preference of the machine, not part of a session, so they are not in the session file and are not affected by anything that happens to it.

What they do

A shortcut is a second way to press the button, and it does what the button does. Pressing one that has nothing to act on — Next with nothing playing — is silent rather than an error.

This is worth stating because the scripted interfaces behave differently: everything in automation addresses the permanent Queue, so a scripted next while a saved playlist is playing moves playback into the Queue. A shortcut does not. It acts on whatever is actually playing, wherever it lives.

Media keys

The play, previous and next keys on Apple keyboards and on Bluetooth headphones control Fadenza while it is the active Now Playing app, along with the controls in Control Centre and on the Lock Screen.

This runs through the system’s own media command centre — if you start something in another player, the media keys follow it there.

Neither this nor a global shortcut is an event tap. Fadenza never asks to watch what you type; it registers the specific combinations you assigned and receives those. That is the difference between needing an Accessibility grant and needing nothing, and it is why there is no permission prompt anywhere in this feature.

Volume

⌘ ↑ and ⌘ ↓ change Fadenza’s own volume, not the system’s. Nothing else on the machine gets quieter.

Mute is separate state rather than volume set to zero, so unmuting returns to the level you had rather than to silence.