Control iTunes with your keyboard

There are a lot of ways you can control iTunes from the keyboard, letting you search for songs, play songs, and even create playlists. Here are some useful tips.

The spacebar, which works as a play/pause button, is probably the most commonly used iTunes keyboard shortcut. It works both when iTunes is in its full-size window and when it's in the mini-player window (click on the green button at the top-left of the window to toggle between the two). Pressing the right or left arrow key in view mode allows you to quickly skip ahead or back, respectively, between tracks; it's just like pressing the next or previous button on an iPod (in other modes, command-arrow is needed). You can also skip ahead or back within a track that's playing by pressing command and option with the right or left arrow keys; this jumps the song by five-second intervals. If you're browsing media, you can also start playing a selected item by pressing the return key. (These shortcuts work with all types of content: music, videos, podcasts and audiobooks.) You can control the volume using command-up-arrow and command-down-arrow to raise and lower it, respectively; command-option-down-arrow mutes iTunes, and command-option-up-arrow restores the volume.

When you're playing video, you have a number of additional options. To change the size of the video, press command-0 (half size), command-1 (actual size), command-2 (double size) or command-3 (fit the screen). You can also view full-screen video by pressing command-F, and you can get out of full screen by pressing the escape key.

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