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Taskplay is a free open source program for Microsoft Windows devices that enables you to control media playback from the Windows Taskbar.

Windows users have one, and often several, options when it comes to controlling media playback on their devices.

All media players ship with controls that let you pause, stop or skip media, and most support hotkeys as well. Some players support global hotkeys, and others media keys on the computer keyboard.

If you happen to dislike all of those options, and prefer an option to control playback from the Windows Taskbar, then Taskplay may be the right program for you.

The first question that you may have may be about the why. Why would someone want to control media playback from the taskbar?

Apart from personal preference, the main thing that Taskplay offers is consistency. The media playback controls are always in the same location, and not shown somewhere in the program window of the media player.

This requires however that Taskplay's media icons support the media player. A quick test on a Windows PC showed that most music players are supported while most video players are not.

AIMP, Foobar, Groove, and MediaMonkey worked fine, and so did Windows Media Player. The popular video players VLC Media Player and SMPlayer on the other hand could not be controlled using Taskplay's media icons in the taskbar.

The program works as you'd expect it to. A click on the play button toggles between pause and play, and the back and forward buttons do exactly what they are supposed to do.

Since the media controls are displayed in the system tray area, this gives you quick access to the volume controls as well.

Taskplay ships with a single setting right now only. It is not enabled by default, and will start the player with Windows when enabled. May be an option if you make use of it regularly on your system.

The major downside right now is support for media players, and a minor one is that you cannot control the media buttons using global hotkeys. This would be quite the hand feature for programs who don't support global hotkeys.

Plenty of third-party programs exist that add media playback controls to Windows. We have reviewed the following in the past:

Media Keyboard to add support for hotkeys to players that don't support media keyboard keys.

Media Player Hotkeys to set up your own media player shortcuts.

SKeys, which can map media functions among other things to keys.

WMP Keys which adds global hotkeys to Windows Media Player

Taskplay is an easy to use program that adds another media playback control option to Windows. Most Windows users may not have a use for it, but some may think it interesting enough to give it a try.

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Software Name

Taskplay

Operating System

Windows

Software Category

Multimedia

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Originally posted here:
Taskplay: media controls for the Windows Taskbar - Ghacks Technology News