Media Keys don't work [EDIT: in google-chrome]

[dennisn]

The Play/Pause/Previous/Next media keys on my keyboards don't work in any of my browsers. I've ripped almost all my hair out, and still haven't solved this.

Sites like https://unixpapa.com/js/testkey.html do report the proper keypresses, but apparently this isn't enough for our wonderful bloat-browsers (eg. firefox-bin, google-chrome-stable). Sites like youtube, or https://googlechrome.github.io/samples/media-session/ refuse to use them.

My firefox-bin does have "media.hardwaremediakeys.enabled"

My google-chrome does have the "hardware-media-key-handling" flag enabled BUT it is mysteriously missing "enable-media-session-service" which it says is also required !?

I do not see any obvious error messages in my terminal. They just silently refuse to work!?

"playerctl --list-all" shows nothing when the browsers are running.

"dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus /org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus.ListNames" also basically shows nothing, no "MPRIS" (Media Player Remote Interfacing Specification)

Am I missing some piece of this Rube Goldbergian puzzle? Perhaps some "media session" provider or manager? What's going on!? Why can't I have basic keys working . I'm tempted to give up and simply remap XF86AudioPlay to a "space" keypress - that seems to work on most sites anyways. This is nuts.

[dennisn]

Some good news. So it works fine in firefox, after I wrap it in "dbus-run-session", and use "playerctl" to control it.

So I guess the problem is with google-chrome. Still no obvious error messages there, and no players are listed with playerctl.