One of Spotify’s best features is its ability for a client to become a remote to another version of itself running on a different device. A few months ago I started using the Mac app on my laptop to control the speakers connected to a PC in my office.

Everything works pretty well, except for the volume. Out of habit, I would use the volume keys on my Mac to adjust the volume only to change the system volume and not affect Spotify at all. After probably 600 times of doing this I decided to fix it.

Hammerspoon to the rescue! (For those not in the know, Hammerspoon allows you to write Lua scripts to control your Mac with a really great “standard library” of functions to control things like window positions, volume, running AppleScript, etc.)

With this little bit of code in my ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua file I can use:

• F7 to goto the previous song
• F8 to play/pause Spotify only (sometimes iTunes or something would randomly launch before)
• F9 to skip to the next song
• F11/F12 to adjust the volume of Spotify if playing, otherwise adjust the system volume

-- Remap media keys to Spotify-priority equivalents
hs.hotkey.bind({}, "f7", function()
  hs.spotify.previous()
end)

hs.hotkey.bind({}, "f8", function()
  hs.spotify.playpause()
end)

hs.hotkey.bind({}, "f9", function()
  hs.spotify.next()
end)

hs.hotkey.bind({}, "f11", function()
  playing = hs.spotify.isPlaying()

  if playing then
    hs.spotify.volumeDown()
  else
    output = hs.audiodevice.defaultOutputDevice()
    output:setVolume(output:volume() - 10)
  end
end)

hs.hotkey.bind({}, "f12", function()
  playing = hs.spotify.isPlaying()

  if playing then
    hs.spotify.volumeUp()
  else
    output = hs.audiodevice.defaultOutputDevice()
    output:setVolume(output:volume() + 10)
  end
end)

You have to change the Keyboard System Preferences to intrepret the top row as F1, F2, etc. instead of Brightness, Volume, etc.) I picked F7 through F12 so the markings on the keys matched the functionality.

Of course, this may all be irrelevant with the Magic Toolbar…