It’s not really a big secret that iTunes isn’t exactly the best media player out there. Although I really don’t have any issue with iTunes, I’ve seen the amount of hate that iTunes generates among Mac users. Sometimes, I too want a simplistic media player that will play any format I throw at it, and will neither require any library management. That is where Vox comes in.
Vox is a music player that taps into your iTunes library, but really does not carry as much “junk” as iTunes does. Vox has been around for a while, we even mentioned in an article dated back to 2011, but unlike iTunes, Vox focuses on keeping things simple:
Unlike iTunes, Vox is only a small window with your library, and nothing else. In the menus, you get access to everything you’d expect; be it Last.fm support or EQ, everything is there. What we like: None of it’s in your way when you just want to simply play music.
Today, I’ll be showing you how to use your Mac keyboard’s media keys to control Vox instead of iTunes. This tutorial assumes you already have Vox installed on your Mac. If you haven’t, you can download Vox from the Mac App Store.
Step 1: Open up Vox on your Mac. Once up and running, select the Preferences menu from the menubar:
Step 2: Select the “Control” tab. Once that’s opened, you’ll see a button “Learn More” at the bottom of the window:
Step 3: Click on “Learn More.” Doing so will open your default browser which will lead you to Vox’s website:
Step 4: The website will tell you of an add-on to Vox, which will enable other features. (In this case, using media keys with Vox.) Click on “Download Now” to start downloading the add-on.
Step 5: Once the download is completed, double-click it to install the preference pane. You can install this for one user or for all users.
Once done, you’ll see a new button present at the bottom of the System Preferences window.
Click it, and you can control which buttons will control Vox:
You can choose whether you want to use your headphone playback buttons, your keyboard media buttons and/or the Apple remote to control Vox media player. Quite useful if you want get rid of iTunes.
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Shujaa Imran
Shujaa Imran is MakeTechEasier’s resident Mac tutorial writer. He’s currently training to follow his other passion become a commercial pilot. You can check his content out on Youtube
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