One of the first things I wanted to get to work once I installed Xmonad were the media keys. I use music as a way to concentrate when coding and having to go through the hassle of finding the player window, reaching for my mouse, and clicking on the control buttons is a waste of time and focus. So controlling playback from my keyboard is a must.
However Xmonad doesn't support media keys out of the box, so in order to have them working I had to define some keybindings.
How keybindings work
First I had to import the XMonad.Util.EZConfig module at the top of my config.
import XMonad.Util.EZConfig
The XMonad.Util.EZConfig includes additionalKeys which can be used to define keybindings. The syntax is the following
myKeyBindings =
[ ((mod1Mask, xK_f), spawn "firefox") -- mod+f launches Firefox
, ((noModMask, xK_Print), spawn "scrot -s") -- PrtScr takes a screenshot
]
myConfig = def
{
terminal = myTerminal,
modMask = myModMask,
startupHook = myStartupHook
} `additionalKeys` myKeyBindings
where noModMask is used for when you don't need a modifier, like in the example above where
While that certainly works, it's not exactly the most straightforward syntax. Thankfully the very same module also includes additionalKeysP, which helps solving exactly that. According to the docs, it uses "Emacs-style keybinding specifications", which I would have rather called human-friendly specifications but I guess that wasn't equally catchy.
So with the new syntax, the config becomes
myKeyBindings =
[ ("M-f", spawn "firefox")
, ("<Print>", spawn "scrot -s")
]
myConfig = def
{
terminal = myTerminal,
modMask = myModMask,
startupHook = myStartupHook
} `additionalKeysP` myKeyBindings
Much better! A full list of the supported special keys can be found in Xmonad docs.
Setting media keys up
Next was to set up media keys. In order for them to work, besides a keybinding, I also needed something to control the currently active player. For that I installed playerctl which worked great both from my keyboard and from my headphones.
myKeyBindings =
[ ("M-f", spawn "firefox")
, ("<Print>", spawn "scrot -s")
-- Media keys
, ("<XF86AudioPlay>", spawn "playerctl play-pause")
, ("<XF86AudioNext>", spawn "playerctl next")
, ("<XF86AudioPrev>", spawn "playerctl previous")
]
Note that if you are using additionalKeys, you will have to import Graphics.X11.ExtraTypes.XF86 in order to use xF86XK_AudioPlay and co.